The Gazebo

  But Norma Davenport didn’t have to tell them anything, Deirdre realized with a start. She could politely show them to the door and take Emmaline’s secrets to the grave.

  Quiet desperation filled Deirdre. “My mother is dead, ma’am,” she said. “And the Captain knows about the affair, same as I do. Somewhere out there is my real father, my birth father. And I intend to find him.”

  Norma’s fingers fluttered to her throat. “Oh, dear. But how can you be sure…”

  “There was an accident,” Stone explained. “The blood tests proved Deirdre isn’t Captain McDaniel’s biological daughter. Mrs. McDaniel managed to keep the truth from her husband, but left this letter where she was sure someday Deirdre would find it and learn the truth.”

  Stone handed Norma the letter. The old woman groped for a pair of frameless glasses hanging on a gold chain around her neck and slipped them on, reading the anguished lines her friend had written.

  “Why would my mother keep this unless she wanted me to find my way back to this man, whoever he is?” Deirdre pressed.

  “I don’t know,” Norma said, waffling.

  “My brother, Cade, heard the story straight from Mom’s mouth years ago. There’s no denying the affair happened, or that I’m the daughter of some man I’ve never seen.”

  “But even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean I know anything about this.”

  “Cade demanded to know what Mom had done with him while she—she was sleeping with this man. Mom said he stayed with her best friend.”

  Norma pressed her hand to her throat in dismay. “I wouldn’t want Captain McDaniel to know that I…well, had anything to do with—”

  Why should that matter? Deirdre wondered. It was obvious her mother had told this woman plenty when it came to what the Captain had done to wreck the marriage. But obviously Norma Davenport cared very much what Martin McDaniel thought.

  “Mrs. Davenport, this is a private inquiry,” Stone tried to reassure the woman. “There’s no reason Captain McDaniel needs to know you’ve even spoken to us if that would make it easier for you to tell what you know.”

  “I know you must think I’m being a silly old woman, trying to keep secrets no one should care about anymore. But Martin McDaniel saved my husband’s life and…I’ve always thought of the thirty years of marriage we shared after that mission as a kind of gift from him. One I treasure. To be the one to throw Emmaline’s infidelity in his face—”

  “He doesn’t know anything about you.” Stone cut in, his tone soothing, as if trying to lure a jumper down off a ledge. “We’re only here because all the research I did pointed to you as Emmaline McDaniel’s closest friend at the time in question.”

  “Mrs. Davenport,” Deirdre pleaded. “I’m begging you. Please.”

  Norma looked from Deirdre to Stone, obviously torn about what to do. Stone stepped into her line of vision, giving her that penetrating look that always made Deirdre feel as if he were a superhero with X-ray vision and if she wanted to keep her secrets she’d better dive behind a solid lead wall.

  Deirdre could almost feel Stone melting the woman’s resistance, getting Norma Davenport to somehow trust him.

  After a long moment, Norma spoke. “All right, then. Yes. There was…a man. Emmaline was still distraught over what Captain McDaniel had done. Then the squad was deployed again, before they could work things out.”

  “You mean, before the Captain could bully her into seeing things his way?” Deirdre asked grimly.

  “She loved music. We went to a jazz club called The Rat Pack, and there…there was this man onstage playing saxophone.”

  “Do you remember his name? What he looked like?”

  “Jimmy…something. He was beautiful to look at—so different from our men. Tall and slender, with these big, dark eyes that looked as if they’d seen too much of life. And when he held that saxophone, it was as if every woman in the place could feel his hands on her and wanted to take his pain away.”

  Deirdre remembered her mother’s songs, the haunting sadness inside her that the Captain had never understood. But this Jimmy must have understood the gentle, fragile places in Emmaline McDaniel, places bruised when her husband had discounted her fears, thrown her back into that terror of uncertainty after she’d begged him not to.

  “Jimmy promised to take her home after the club closed,” Norma continued. “I told her it was crazy, but…I think the Captain’s betrayal hurt her so much she wanted to hurt him back.” Norma raised eyes filled with empathy to Deirdre. “It may not be noble to do something like that, dear, but it’s very, very human.”

  “She began to see this musician after that?” Stone asked.

  Norma nodded. “Emmaline slipped away every night, just to hear the music, she said, but I knew better. She left Kincaid to stay with me all night, claiming it was unfair to wake him to take him home. Then she’d steal out to the car, dressed up in something soft and pretty. For the first time since I’d met her, her eyes—her eyes, they just sparkled. She’d laugh and smile and looked so young. That sad young wife I’d first met transforming before my eyes. It made me understand what made Captain McDaniel fall in love with her.”

  Deirdre tried to picture her mother glowing and adventurous, breaking all the rules. Happy in a way Deirdre had never seen her. Had she been insane? Cheating on the Captain so close to the base, where anybody might see her? Or by that time was she just too hurt to care?

  “It’s too dangerous, I’d warn her,” Norma said, “but she’d just toss her hair and say her own husband loved danger more than he loved her, so why shouldn’t she taste some of it herself? Maybe she’d finally understand what he found so irresistible.”

  “So she was trying to get even with the Captain?” Stone asked. “Then why keep it secret for thirty-some years?”

  “Only Emmaline could tell you that. I can tell you this—that her world came crashing in. The Captain got caught in a cross fire and was airlifted back to the States two weeks later, badly wounded. Emmaline rushed to his bedside. They must have worked something out because I never heard her mention her jazz musician again.”

  “Revenge. Nice,” Deirdre said bitterly. “I was conceived to get back at the Captain. Guess that worked, and then some. Nothing like a hell-born kid like me to punish someone.”

  “What about the musician,” Stone probed. “After the McDaniels left the base, did you ever hear about him?”

  “He sold band instruments during the day at a place called Lelands near Fort Benning. It closed four years later when the building burned to the ground. I’m afraid if you’re looking for records, you’ll find a dead end. People drift in and out of an army town, you know. There have been so many new families in and out of the base since Emmaline and I were there that it wouldn’t even seem like the same place. From the little Emmaline said about her musician, he’d moved even more often than she had.”

  And would have continued moving from town to town, stage to stage, Deirdre figured, remembering her own years of singing for her supper. Another stage, another crowd, another chance to be discovered.

  “Deirdre.” Mrs. Davenport laid her hand on Deirdre’s arm. “Even if this turns out to be a dead end, there is something you need to know. Your mother was a good person.”

  “Yeah, just ask my father. She was perfect. Except for the part where she slept with some guy who wasn’t her husband, and then passed me off as the Captain’s kid.”

  Norma winced at her bluntness. “I don’t think life was easy for her. Especially during the time Captain McDaniel was in the army. She didn’t fit in with the other wives, hated bridge and golf and tennis. And shy—lord, she was shy. And the soldiers, well, they brought the rowdy out in each other. Drinking and playing poker and pool. Staying up all night. And the Captain, he was such an adrenaline junkie, a workaholic. So consumed, he didn’t even see how much she hated it all….”

  The older woman seemed lost in memories. She twisted the thin gold wedding band around one gnarled fin
ger. “You know, it wasn’t long after the Captain was injured that her mother died. I was glad when I heard Emmaline had a daughter of her own, someone to love, share all the things she and her own mother had.”

  Deirdre swallowed hard, couldn’t manage a reply through a throat thick with emotion. Maybe her mother had been happy, those first months after she’d been born. Been able to dress Deirdre up in frilly clothes, put ribbons in her hair, imagine giving her pearls and teaching her to do all those needlework things Emmaline had always loved. And if Emmaline had longed to recapture the closeness she’d had with her own mother, she must have been even more disappointed in the daughter she had than Deirdre had imagined.

  Norma reached up, took Deirdre’s chin between her fingers, lifting her face to the light. “Strange. I never would have guessed you were Emmaline’s daughter. It’s hard to see any hint of her in your face, Deirdre—do you know that?”

  “Yeah. We, uh, never looked much alike.” She wanted to get out of here. Needed some air. The past was winding too tight around her chest, making it hard to breathe. “If you don’t know anything else, maybe we should go,” Deirdre said. “Not, uh, take up any more of your time.”

  She dreaded that the older woman might see a crack in her armor, couldn’t bear the humiliation of anyone trying to comfort her, reassure her, attempt to convince her that what she knew was wrong. That her mother hadn’t seen her as one giant mistake.

  But Norma still seemed puzzled, her brow wrinkling despite an obvious face-lift. “Well, isn’t life just full of surprises,” she mused. “You’re nothing like I expected you’d be when Mr. Stone here told me I was going to get to meet my dear friend Emmaline’s daughter.”

  “I wasn’t the daughter my mother expected, either,” Deirdre confessed, old wounds twisting inside her. Or the daughter she wanted, a voice whispered in Deirdre’s head. “Goodbye, Mrs. Davenport. And thank you.”

  Stone was still giving the woman his card when Deirdre walked out the door.

  CHAPTER 7

  DEIRDRE SLID INTO THE TRUCK, dreading Stone’s approach, figuring the P.I. was probably going to comment on how rude she’d been or make one of those obnoxious jibes he liked so much, just to raise her blood pressure. Worse still, what if he leveled one of those stares on her that made her feel like that Visible Woman model Emma had made for the sixth-grade science fair, every nerve revealed through clear plastic skin.

  For a wild moment she wondered what a shock it would be to the jerk if she burst into tears. No, better to slug him in the arm so hard he’d be sore for a week.

  But Stone just slid into the driver’s side, looking relieved the interview was over. “We got all the information she had to give.”

  “You think?” Deirdre snapped. “You’ve done your job. Now I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Fine with me.” He switched on the CD player, and Cole Porter poured into the cab of the truck. She wished she could turn it off, but another part of her ached to listen, hearing it in her mother’s untrained voice, knowing for the first time where the soulful, haunted quality in Emmaline’s music had come from.

  Stone grabbed the cell phone that hadn’t been out of his hand for ten minutes at a time during the drive to Norma’s.

  He punched the buttons, held it to his ear.

  “Don’t tell me. You missed a call from Sherlock Holmes,” Deirdre sniped.

  Stone scowled at her and backed out of the drive. “No, the CIA’s calling me for advice.”

  Obviously, more of Stone’s bullshit. Maybe the state of the nation wasn’t in danger, but the state of Stone’s sanity was. He was edgy as all get-out, his temper ready to snap.

  Twenty minutes later Deirdre couldn’t stand the tension another moment.

  “It’s a car, not a phone booth,” Deirdre complained as Stone hit automatic dial on the cell phone for the fifth time since they’d left Norma’s. Stone swore.

  “The answering machine again!”

  “Is there a problem?”

  Stone glared at her. “Damn it, Trula,” he snarled into the receiver. “Pick up the damned phone! I know you’re there!”

  “Lovers’ quarrel?” Deirdre asked so sweetly Stone looked like he wanted to kill her.

  Stone slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel in frustration. “She knows it makes me crazy when she does this.”

  “Does what? Refuses to be at your beck and call? If you were yelling at me over the phone like that I’d change my phone number.”

  “Just as long as she doesn’t change the locks. We’re going to have to make a quick stop on the way home,” he growled.

  “Oh, no,” Deirdre objected. “I’m not being dragged over to some dramatic scene with your girlfriend. Emma and Drew are supposed to come over after school, and—”

  “God forbid the poor kid sneaks a kiss in before you get home,” Stone steered onto the highway at a speed that would’ve gotten him pulled over if a cop had been in sight. “It won’t be the end of the world.”

  “Jake Stone, the great expert on kids. Exactly how many do you have?”

  “None. I’m an expert on teenage boys, though. That kid has it bad for your daughter.”

  Deirdre’s heart lurched. “Damn it, Stone, turn this car around. I mean it.”

  Stone tried to jam his fingers back through his hair, cursed as he yanked on the silver band. He ripped the tie free and threw it into the back seat along with the necktie he’d shed earlier. Thick black hair fell to his shoulders, making him even more dangerous looking and sexy than he had moments before. He looked like a pirate or an outlaw or a highwayman in one of those romance novels Finn was always leaving around, hoping Deirdre might read one.

  If gradually disrobing was Stone’s way of handling frustration no wonder he had so many girlfriends. Pretty soon he’d be buck naked. The image wasn’t one Deirdre wanted to deal with at the moment. At the moment? Ever.

  “Stone, I mean it. You take me home this instant or—”

  “You can either stay in the car while I do what I have to do and end up home an hour late or you can get out and walk, in which case you’ll get back to Whitewater sometime next Tuesday. It’s immaterial to me.”

  “You’re a bastard.”

  “Finally something we agree on. What’s it going to be? Do I pull over at the nearest gas station?” Stone wrestled with his cell phone again.

  Deirdre clenched her fists, hating the fury, the fear, feelings of utter helplessness flooding through her. He was right, the jerk. She was trapped like a rat.

  Thank God he looked every bit as miserable as she was—Mr. Cool was one seething lump of masculine outrage and worry. Was it possible he actually loved a woman named Trula Devine? Enough to warrant the scowl on his rugged face, the granite set to his jaw, the flash in those hunting tiger eyes.

  What would it be like to have a man as hard-edged as Jake Stone care so much about you that he’d tip his hand, let a virtual stranger see the kind of power a woman had to tear him apart?

  Deirdre felt a tingle of something that couldn’t be envy. So Stone had it bad for a woman. And no man had ever felt that fiercely about Deirdre. She didn’t want that in her life. Had made damn sure no man would take the place of the music she’d once loved, distract her from making up to Emma the months her mother had been gone.

  Hide behind Emma, she could almost hear Stone jeer. God forbid you let yourself be a woman.

  Her stomach soured. In anger, she assured herself. Not from any sense of loss because Emma would leave soon, too soon, and she’d face the rest of her life alone. And no matter how much that broke Deirdre’s heart, she’d be glad. Glad when Emma was out of Whitewater. Glad when Emma was safe…where the bright lights and energy on Broadway would remind her every day of dreams she didn’t want to lose.

  But Emma wasn’t out of town yet. And Drew Lawson would be coming home from school with her, going out to the gazebo that had become a favorite trysting place for lovers during the past six year
s, “a realm of magic” one guest had written in the B&B’s memory book, “a rose-covered haven where no one could help but fall in love.” Enchanting as all that sounded, at least to people whose brains were stuffed with all that “happily ever after” propaganda, Deirdre knew for a fact the gazebo had sheltered far earthier interludes than a few stolen kisses and vows of eternal love.

  She still winced at the memory of Finn’s glow the day she’d told her she knew the very night she’d gotten pregnant with the twins. On their anniversary Cade had taken her to the most romantic place in the world…out to the gazebo where they’d been married and…

  More information than she needed to know, Deirdre thought again, but a flutter of panic sprang up in her afresh. If a grown woman didn’t have better sense than to succumb to the gazebo’s aura of romance, what chance did a teenage girl playing Juliet have?

  Deirdre dug in her purse for her cell phone and started her own frantic dialing. Maybe she couldn’t wrestle Stone for the steering wheel and make him head back home. But she could get ahold of Finn and beg her to keep an eye on Emma.

  Come on, Finn, be home, Deirdre pleaded silently. God, let somebody be home. Deirdre hadn’t spoken to the Captain for a week, but even if he answered, she’d swallow her pride, ask him…To what? Drag himself across the garden between the two houses with his broken hip? The terrifying thing was he was just stubborn enough to try it and somewhere on the uneven path fall and break whatever other bone hit the flagstone first.

  But Emma…

  Deirdre’s heart sank as Will’s self-important little voice came on the phone. This is the McDaniel res-ee-dence. Amy chimed in, We got things to do, so leave a message after it beeps, then softer, the twins clamoring, Did we do it right this time, Daddy?