“Nothing.”
“You don’t look like nothing.” Ellyn twisted farther around, then added a significant, surprised, “Oh!”
Kendra faced forward. “What on earth is he doing here?”
“This was the best he could do for night life in Far Hills?”
Kendra glared at her friend.
“Ellyn, that’s–”
“Did you have a question, Kendra and Ellyn?” Fran asked from behind the lectern.
Exchanging a look like first-graders caught talking in class, they muttered no in unison and remained quiet–and facing forward–for the rest of the meeting. As soon as people started filing out, however, Ellyn turned to the back of the room.
“Still there,” she reported in a low voice. “Go talk to him.”
“I’m not–”
“I’ll wait in the car. Take your time.”
Without waiting for a response, Ellyn corralled Marti and Fran, easing them toward the door along with the handful of people who’d lingered to ask Fran questions. They’d almost reached the door when Kendra saw Marti put on the brakes, her head turned toward where Daniel stood, in jeans and a blue plaid shirt.
“What’s he doing here?”
At Marti’s question, Fran craned around, but Ellyn took a firm hold of each woman’s arm and practically pushed the pair out the door.
“He must have come to see Kendra. Come on.”
Then she closed the door behind them, leaving Kendra alone in the room with Daniel.
Kendra knew that wouldn’t last. The custodian would arrive soon to fold the chairs–if Marti didn’t show up first.
Daniel hadn’t budged, arms folded over his broad chest, leaning against the wall. Only his eyes moved as she walked toward him.
“You followed me? I didn’t know Taumaturgio indulged in spying.”
He grinned, swift and short. “No, I didn’t follow you–this time. You and your friends talked about a meeting for a baby-sitting cooperative. A copy of the Far Hills Banner did the rest.”
He’d listened very closely if he’d picked up all that.
“Why bother?”
“I have a son who’ll be coming here, don’t I?”
“Matthew will be coming, yes.”
“There you go, Kendra.” He said it the way he used to–Paulo used to. She held off a flood of memories as he continued, “So, shouldn’t I know what it’s about? Shouldn’t I expect to be putting in my share of time, too?”
She felt a jolt in her chest–surprise or fear?
He meant to stick around long enough to get involved in that sort of commitment?
“Fran doesn’t want people dropping in and out of the program.”
“I heard.”
“Why so interested now, Daniel?”
“I’ve been interested from the moment I knew I had a child.”
“Really?” she challenged him. “Then I would have thought you might have touched him, held him this afternoon.”
Daniel didn’t look away from her, didn’t change his posture, but Kendra had a sudden impression of withdrawal. His strong bones appeared harsher, his dark eyes colder. And yet, for no reason she could fathom it made her think him more vulnerable.
In the unforgiving overhead light she noticed for the first time the jagged scar on his cheek from the wood fragment she’d removed from his flesh. She had to clench her hands to keep from tracing it with her fingertips, to assure herself it had healed.
“Guys don’t have the same advantage women do–we’re not born knowing how to deal with kids.” From lightly mocking, his voice sank to almost a growl. “I don’t know how.”
Jerked back from her thoughts, she stumbled out a “What?”
He didn’t answer, as if he regretted his words.
“You can’t be serious.” She studied his face, which gave away nothing. The same sort of expression she’d gotten from Paulo when he hadn’t understood–when he’d pretended to not understand–her English. “You hold him the way your father held you. Besides, you can’t tell me you’re not comfortable with kids–you of all people. All the tales I heard about Taumaturgio and children? How children loved him. How he could get children to trust him, so they weren’t frightened, even when he put them in an airplane and flew them far away where strangers with a strange language treated them in hospitals. This should be a snap after that.”
“Those children had nothing.” The words came out in low, uneven spurts. “Food, clothing, the hope of health–Taumaturgio brought them those things. I understood those kids. But Matthew . . . he’s perfect. He’s strong and well-fed and clean and . . . loved. I can’t give him anything he needs. He has everything.”
Her reaction came immediately and from somewhere deeper than thought.
“He doesn’t have a father.”
He looked at her, his dark eyes fierce, as if her words had pushed aside the doubts of a moment ago. “He does have a father. What he doesn’t have is a family. That’s what I want to give him. That’s what I want us to be.”
“Visitation and–”
“No. Not visitation.” He straightened away from the wall and took her hand in both of his. The motion brought him close enough that she felt the temperature around her rise and she drew in a scent her pulse recognized as his. Until this instant, she hadn’t realized she’d carried that scent with her these past three years, that it had lived in her memory or her senses or her heart.
The deep murmur of his voice captured her attention.
“Marry me, Kendra.”
“Wh–What?”
“Marry me.” He cupped her cheek with his palm. “We’ll be a family with our son.”
He’d touched her this way during the hurricane. The gentle strokes of sensation against her skin. The comforting, stirring touch that had opened the flood of desire in her. At first the need to celebrate, to validate that they still lived. But even at the time she’d known the other times they’d made love could not be so readily defined or limited.
There’d been something deeper, wider–
No . . . Whatever had happened on Santa Estella had been with Paulo, a man who’d never existed. Daniel Delligatti, the man who stood before her now, was not the same man . . . even if her body reacted as if he were. She knew nothing about him.
“No . . . No! Marry you? That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
It had to be his touch that had allowed even those fleeting thoughts, those memories of better-forgotten sensations to pass through her mind.
She moved away from that heat and temptation. But stepping back resembled retreat. She pivoted and took a seat in the end chair. Her knees might have been a bit unsteady.
“Do you remember the hurricane, Kendra? Do you remember when the roof collapsed?”
Yes, she remembered. That was the danger.
“We made a pledge, Kendra.”
“A pledge?” She tried a laugh that rasped against her throat. “We didn’t make any pledge. We didn’t even speak the same language.”
Without releasing her gaze, he advanced the two steps to her chair. He took her hand again and, before she could resist, he brought it to his chest, and opened it, so her palm absorbed the rhythm of his heart. Her pulse remembered that rhythm, adapting to it, amplifying it, until it drummed in her ears.
“It’s a pledge I intend to keep, Kendra.”
“That storm–that storm wasn’t real life.” She pulled her hand free, and he dropped his hands to his side, still standing in front of her. “That person wasn’t really me. Like being drunk or . . . being drugged. In an altered state. Not reality.”
“Is that what you think?”
Why should she sense danger in that quiet question? Why should those soft words make the hair on her arms stir?
She defied him and her reaction.
“Yes.”
He tipped his head back, letting the light from the ceiling fixture stream down on him, highlighting his strong nose and sharp bones, dropping
shadows into the lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes. Lines born of squinting into the sun, lines of laughing, lines of concentrating. On life and death.
He nodded once, as if agreeing with his own thought, then slowly leveled his gaze on her. She didn’t shrink back. She sat there, solid and steady, ignoring the stirring of fine hairs not only on her arms but up the back of her neck.
He leaned over her, close now but his face less readable because the angle of his head shadowed them both from the light. Closer. Ever closer, his hands resting on the back of her chair. Close enough that he could kiss her if he wanted, his lips brushing against hers or taking her mouth deeper, taking it completely, and she would have nowhere to go to evade him. Nowhere . . .
“The storm drugged you?”
How could such a question feel seductive? How could it fire images and sensations into her mind and body? She swallowed, but she stayed still.
“Yes.”
“Ah.” His soft breath stirred the hair at her temple. His gaze locked with hers. “All over the world, people are drugged to make them give up a truth they would give up no other way. That is what the storm did to you, Kendra. To us.”
He didn’t wait for a response, but straightened and pivoted away in one easy motion, his triumph complete. He’d outtalked her and outmaneuvered her and outreasoned her.
Only as the sound of the door closing informed her he’d left did Kendra realize it had not been triumph she’d seen in his eyes.
Not triumph at all, but pain.
*
The phone in his motel room rang, pulling Daniel from sleep to alertness before the first ring finished. Only one person he knew who’d be calling him here–Kendra.
He’d pushed too hard, too fast last night. Acting, when waiting might have been wiser.
He intended to give Matthew the family he deserved, but it had been much too soon to hit Kendra. He’d already seen how she’d retreated that afternoon–so what had he been thinking?
Obvious answer: He wasn’t thinking.
The phone rang a second time.
If she was calling him–he checked the clock–before eight-thirty, maybe he hadn’t blundered after all.
“Hello.”
“Daniel? This is Robert. Your brother.”
Robert invariably identified himself that way. Daniel wondered if Robert doubted Daniel would recognize his voice from one infrequent phone conversation to the next, or if Robert needed to remind himself of their relationship.
“Hello, Robert. Everything okay?”
Robert had been in college when his staid parents had adopted a nameless scrawny kid from the streets of South America. At first they’d tolerated each other for the sake of Robert Senior and Annette. Over the years of sporadic contact their suspicions had eased. More was unlikely.
“Yes, yes, everything’s fine. I saw Mother and Father last week for dinner in Florida. Both appear to be enjoying excellent health. They told me you’d stopped over on your way back from Sa–um, after your latest assignment.”
Now, that was interesting. Daniel had never mentioned where he’d been, so they couldn’t have told Robert about Santa Estella. He’d certainly never told Robert. Nor to his knowledge would Robert have any reason for knowing his assignment.
Although . . . he’d wondered what Robert did in Washington. Robert Senior’s advances in the foreign service had been straightforward and public. Robert Junior operated in the shadows. Daniel had his suspicions, but no certain knowledge.
For one thing, Robert had an uncanny knack for knowing how to contact Daniel even when the number of people who knew where he’d be could be counted on one hand.
“Yeah, I hadn’t gotten loose for a visit in a while–” An understatement. During his years as Taumaturgio, trips back to the States had been sporadic and brief. “–so I stayed longer.”
“Father mentioned that you’d received a number of phone calls while you were there.”
“Yes.” Some from contacts working on Kendra’s whereabouts and some from his bosses.
“I understand you’re taking a leave of absence.”
“You didn’t hear that from Mother and Father.” Because he hadn’t told them.
“No, no I didn’t.”
Daniel had little patience for fencing–besides he’d never beat the master at it.
“Robert, what’s this about? I visited in Florida. I made phone calls. I took a leave. Is that a problem for you?”
“For me?” the older man sounded genuinely surprised. “Not at all. However, Daniel, it has come to my attention that some people have been making inquiries about you with certain sources here in Washington.”
Kendra.
“That so?” He wondered if Robert would hear the grin in his voice, or understand it if he could.
Why was he not surprised?
Because the fact of her being a resourceful, skeptical and tenacious reporter had worried him when he’d first encountered her on Santa Estella. It was the reason he’d followed her when she’d refused to leave the island with her crew and instead headed out on the trail of Taumaturgio– his trail. It was the reason, once the hurricane hit and she’d been fighting her way up the street, that he’d made sure she heard that banging door so she’d take shelter where he could keep an eye on her.
Well, part of the reason.
But it was the only reason he’d stayed away after Aretha. Reporter Kendra Jenner had been too dangerous to Taumaturgio.
She’d have dug and dug until she knew exactly who he was. As Taumaturgio he couldn’t afford that. But if digging now helped her feel about Daniel Delligatti what she’d once felt for Paulo Ayudor . . .
“Yes. It also came to my attention that a certain university’s alumni roster was accessed on your behalf shortly before you left for Wyoming.”
Daniel’s grin evaporated. Came to Robert’s attention, his ass. “Are you tracking me, Robert?”
“No.” He said it with convincing simplicity. “However, a number of people know of our connection. In addition, I have had occasion to talk with the people who have supervised you while you dealt with certain, uh, issues, and they have expressed to me both their concern about your abrupt move to take an extended leave and their eagerness to have you return to your former status.”
“I’m not ready to go back.”
“Will you be soon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is there a problem, Daniel? Something . . . Well, with these questions being asked . . .”
“The questions have nothing to do with my job, Robert. Tell anyone who asks it’s fine with me to answer anything that doesn’t breach security. And don’t worry, I won’t breach it, either, if that’s why you called.”
“I never thought you would.” Robert’s calm answer both irked and pleased Daniel. The guy just didn’t get riled, but his underlying certainty about Daniel’s trustworthiness also stirred a kernel of warmth in Daniel. “I called because I thought you should be aware of these inquiries, and . . .”
When Robert uncharacteristically allowed that to dangle, Daniel prompted, “And?”
“If you’re having a personal problem that I can help with . . .” Robert cleared his throat and paused.
Well, I’ll be damned.
That was all Daniel could think, too surprised to say anything.
“I hope you know you could call on me, Daniel.”
“Thank you,” he got out. It sounded rusty, unused. “I . . . I appreciate that. But it’s not anything anyone can, uh, help with.”
“I understand. Would you prefer that I not indicate to Mother and Father where you are at the moment?”
“No–I’ll call them soon myself.”
“Very well, I’ll leave that to you then. Goodbye, Daniel.”
“Goodbye, Robert.”
Daniel still had a hand on the phone when it rang a second time. He jerked it up and barked out a hello.
This time it was Kendra.
�
�Do you have time to come by this morning?”
It was not the voice of a woman who’d reconsidered a man’s proposal and decided to say yes. It was clipped and businesslike.
“I have nothing but time.”
“Around nine. My house. We have to talk.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Morning, Kendra.”
Silently, she stepped back, and let him pass. He hadn’t wasted any time. Nine-oh-two.
His eyes searched the room as he came in.
“Matthew’s at Marti’s, playing with Emily this morning.”
He nodded. “I suppose that’s good.”
“It can get difficult carrying on a conversation when he’s in top gear.”
She gestured for him to take the same chair he’d occupied yesterday. Had it only been yesterday? She’d experienced so many emotions–
She cut off that thought with a dose of the mundane.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
She’d already been moving toward the coffee maker, expecting to have the excuse to fiddle with it for a while. She poured herself a cup she didn’t particularly want.
“If you’re going to stay around Far Hills a while–”
“I am,” he interjected.
“–you might as well come to the back door. That’s what folks do around here. Especially if we ever get the rain we’ve been needing and it’s muddy.”
“I’ll remember. What do you want to talk about?”
His directness made her foray into a weather report stand out all the more. What was her problem?
She’d thought this out last night. All of last night.
From that first moment of joy at seeing him, of knowing he was alive and safe, her feelings had jumbled contradictions on top of contradictions. She wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel so many conflicting emotions at once.
In the end, the rational and understandable point remained that she’d always wanted Matthew to have a father who loved him and was involved in his life. She had to pursue any possibility of that wish coming true for Matthew.
Daniel Delligatti pulled on different identities without a blink. How could someone like him be a good father? But she had to give it a chance–any failure to give Matthew his father must be on Daniel Delligatti’s plate, not hers.
Lost and Found Groom Page 6
