“After going through this information your paid spy gathered, I’ll admit, it’s possible I made your mother pregnant,” Rivers said. “But the hard fact is you’re nothin’ to me and neither is she. Still and all, I like to keep my life simple. So how about you and I strike a bargain, little girl? I pay you a hundred thousand dollars under the table. One lump sum. In return, you swear I’ll never hear from you again.”
Deirdre reeled, sickened. “I don’t want your money. I don’t want anything from you except…”
To feel like I belong, to see where my music comes from, to understand how I came to be and if my mother loved you.
But she couldn’t humiliate herself in front of a man like this one. The Captain’s craggy face flashed into her mind. Proud. Indomitable. Honorable. Martin McDaniel had raised her better than that, even if he might never forgive her.
Her chin bumped up a notch. “What I need, a man like you could never give me.” She turned and walked out the door, Stone a step behind her. They hurried out of the theater, never once looking back.
She didn’t see the jazz musician dig out his wallet, pull a battered photograph from inside it. She didn’t see Rivers look at the dark-haired woman and sweet-faced little boy smiling from the image.
Big Jim Rivers buried his face in his hands and wept.
DEIRDRE BARELY NOTICED Jake’s hand on her elbow as she burst out the theater door, the cool night air striking her in the face. He drew her around to look at him. She felt his hand curve under her chin, trying to force her to meet his gaze.
“Deirdre, you need to talk about what just happened. Don’t shut it up inside.”
“Great idea, Stone,” she cried, despising herself. “Maybe I’ll run over to Cade’s when we get home, announce what a gem my birth father is to the whole family. Tell them I must take after the guy, because I’m completely selfish. After all, look what I was willing to put Cade and Finn and Emma and the Captain through.”
Jake cut in. “Captain McDaniel isn’t completely innocent in this, either, you know. You felt alienated, not good enough—”
“Yeah, that’s me. A complete fuck-up. And here, once again, I prove that no one can screw things up better than I can. It’s a gift, Jake.”
Stone circled her arms with his big hands, gave her a little shake. “You’re not responsible for the fact that Big Jim Rivers is an asshole. Or that you were devastated by what you found in that letter.”
“The Captain was pretty devastated, too. You should have seen him.” She couldn’t stop shaking. “All I wanted was for him to walk across the room to me, Jake. I wanted him to hug me. Tell me it didn’t matter, you know? I wanted…but it wasn’t all about me. He’d just found out his wife had cheated on him, loved another man. That I wasn’t his blood daughter.”
Jake tried to imagine how he would have felt in Martin McDaniel’s place. If he’d just found out Deirdre had been unfaithful, that the daughter he’d never questioned was his own had been conceived by another man. “That would be a hell of a blow to anyone,” he said. “Let alone a man like Captain McDaniel.”
“I’ve barely talked to him for weeks. And now…I’m so ashamed. But that doesn’t change the hurt between us. But maybe this whole mess will be a relief for him in the end. He finally has an excuse when it comes to me.” She dropped her voice low, mimicking the old man’s stern voice. “Deirdre makes a mess of things, but at least she’s not really mine.”
Jake’s gaze burned into hers, so full of pain for her she could barely stand to look at him. She started toward the parking garage, wishing she could outrun Stone’s voice. But he followed, his long strides easily matching hers.
“You’re sure that’s what the Captain thinks?” he said. “You can read his mind?”
“I don’t have to.” Deirdre’s voice broke. She wheeled on him, pain stark in her face. “If Emma did the same thing…decided I wasn’t enough for her, that she wanted a father she’d never seen…I’d—How would I ever survive it?”
“I don’t know how. But you would. You’re strong, Deirdre. A survivor.”
“That’s me, all right. A survivor. Just wall myself off, go through the motions, pretend that everything’s just fine.”
“You don’t have to pretend. Not anymore. I’m here for you, Deirdre. I love you. And so does Emma.”
“Oh, yeah. Emma’s just crazy about me. But then, I’m the only mother she’s got. The Captain got stuck with me.”
“Are you sure he sees it that way?” Stone asked, trying to enfold her in his arms. She tore away from him, too raw inside to be touched. She wrapped her arms tight around her middle, storming toward Stone’s truck. Jake hit the unlock button on his key ring, and Deirdre wrenched open the door and slid into the seat before he had the chance to open it for her.
Stone rounded the vehicle, climbed into the driver’s seat next to her. He put the key in the ignition but didn’t start the engine. Deirdre clenched her hands in her lap, not wanting to talk anymore. Just drive…until she could process everything that had happened. Until she could get her emotional shields back up. But why would Jake start cooperating with her now? The man was relentless. Too damned intuitive for his own good. She’d let him see too much, touch places in her soul she should have left buried deep.
“Deirdre, I know you don’t want to hear any of this right now.”
“But that sure as hell isn’t going to keep you from saying it,” she flung back.
She heard Stone sigh. “Captain McDaniel is an old man,” he reasoned gently. “He’s sick and hurting and he thinks you don’t want him. What would happen if you went to him first?”
“And said what?” Deirdre choked out.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t in your house when you were growing up. Just think, Dee. From what you’ve said I know things weren’t perfect between you two.”
Deirdre gave a harsh laugh. “Far from it.”
“But isn’t there some memory you can hang real hope on?”
She tried not to look at him, but she couldn’t resist. Stone pressed her with nothing but his eyes, beautiful storm-gray eyes filled with love for her.
“Isn’t there something from the past to help both you and the Captain find your way back to each other?”
“Stone, you don’t understand.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” he said, taking her clenched hand in his. “I know you, Deirdre McDaniel, in ways nobody else ever has. You’re a fighter. But you fight fair. And you’re damned hard on yourself. I know this will eat inside you like acid, no matter how hard you work to tough it through. And time might be running out. If you don’t try to find that common ground with the father who raised you, how are you going to feel once he’s gone?”
Anguish tore through her. “Damn you, Stone, I can’t…”
“Can’t what? Admit you were wrong?” Stone squeezed her hand tight. “Explain to the Captain why you felt you had to do this?”
“I wasn’t wrong!” She slammed her other palm against the dashboard. “If he’d made me believe he loved me I never would have searched for a father past my own front door.”
Stone’s face sobered, his mouth curving, so tender, so full of love. She could see emotions warring inside him. Knew he didn’t want to hurt her. But he was more afraid of not telling her the truth.
“And maybe if he’d been sure that you loved him, he would have had the courage to stop you.”
Deirdre huddled into her seat, looking small and broken. “Enough, Stone. No more. I can’t talk—” Her voice broke. “Just leave me alone.”
Stone started the truck, headed out to the highway. Deirdre watched the streetlights flash past, like slides in a carousel. She closed her eyes, almost against her will, as if Jake Stone had unlocked some iron box of memories she kept under lock and key.
Tears burned her eyes, and she heard her father’s voice inside her insisting McDaniels never cry. But there had been one time tears had fallen free. One time Martin McDaniel’s hand had wiped them te
nderly away.
Remember, Stone had charged her. Remember.
Her mind flashed to a shallow grave dug beneath the oak tree in the backyard of her childhood home. Spot, wrapped in the jacket to one of her father’s old dress uniforms, as the Captain laid him in the ground.
Just fifteen years old, Deirdre’s life was already beginning to unravel. Cade beyond her reach, her mother changed, fading like a ghost of the woman she’d been. Deirdre knowing it was all her fault somehow.
She’d clung to Spot even harder, the dog the only warm place in her life still the same. Until he’d gotten so sick she’d had to put him down.
The Captain had taken them both to the vet. She’d held the dog until life slipped away, carried him in her arms all the way home in the Captain’s Jeep.
McDaniels don’t cry—she’d heard it so many times, a litany in her head. But this one day had been different.
She’d tried so hard to choke back the sobs. But then she’d felt her father’s strong arms around her, his voice, funny sounding and thick. He’d told her that sometimes even the bravest soldiers cried when they lost their comrades in arms. That he had cried once in the jungle when his best friend had died, right there next to him. Deirdre and Spot had been fighting the whole world since the day Deirdre brought the mangy mutt into the house, the Captain had told her. And that dog would have died for her in a heartbeat.
Deirdre sobbed inconsolably, clinging to her father for what had seemed forever until he told her it was time to say goodbye. The Captain lined her up beside the little grave, then stood at attention right beside her as they snapped Spot a sharp salute.
She fell asleep remembering how tired she’d been, exhausted. Cade hundreds of miles away, so he couldn’t sit with her all night because she was scared to sleep, the way he had so many times before. But at dawn when her eyes had fluttered open, oh, so briefly, it hadn’t been Cade’s worried young face she saw. Or her mother’s thin, worn-down one. She’d seen the Captain’s hawklike face bending over her. Knew for just an instant he’d give anything in his power to breathe life into that dog of hers again.
Jake gently shook her arm, and she woke to see March Winds, a familiar shape in the moonlight. He scooped her in his arms and carried her inside. She was too tired to protest. He carried her past Emma’s bedroom, pausing to call softly to the girl.
“Help me get her settled. I don’t even know which room is hers.” The teenager balked for a moment, then something about her mother’s waxen face seemed to shake her out of her pout.
Emma led the way, pulled back the covers on Deirdre’s bed. Stone slipped off her shoes and had Emma help divest her of the slim pants. The tuxedo shirt was soft enough for her to sleep in.
He wished he could shuck off his suit coat, kick off his shoes and lie down in the bed with her, gather her close so she could sleep on his chest, so she wouldn’t have to be alone. But things were bad enough between her and Emma. And Deirdre had asked in the truck that he leave her alone.
Stone leaned over her, pressing a kiss to her cheek. It still tasted salty, dry tracks from quiet tears.
“What did you do to her?” Emma snapped as they slipped out the door.
Stone looked down at the kid’s heart-shaped face, torn by indecision. Deirdre might want privacy to deal with everything she’d learned tonight. On the other hand, if Stone didn’t clue Emma in, the kid would probably hammer her about sleeping with him or some such.
“I took her to meet her birth father,” he said.
Emma gaped, stunned. “You did? She found him?”
“Yeah. If I’d had any idea what a jerk the man would be, I never would have told her his name.”
Emma looked solemn for a long moment, shadows falling over her face, making her look younger somehow, her eyes older. “It wasn’t your decision to make,” she said. “It was up to Mom. Just like it’ll be my choice someday, if I want to meet my real dad.”
Stone’s gut clenched as he thought what such a quest would mean to Emma McDaniel, the ugliness she’d find at the end of her search. The thought of this innocent young woman stumbling across the story of her conception the way Deirdre had, by accident, sickened Jake.
He looked away from her, trying to conceal his rioting emotions.
“What was his name?” Emma asked.
For an instant horror washed through Stone, and he thought Emma was asking not about Deirdre’s secret father, but her own. “What was whose name?” Jake asked, trying to buy time.
“Mom’s birth father,” Emma said, looking at him so intently he had to turn away.
“He’s a jazz musician named Big Jim Rivers. But he wouldn’t tell her anything. Just that…” Jake stopped himself. It wasn’t as if he could tell this innocent girl what Rivers had said about his revolving sex partners and the fact he didn’t even remember Emmaline McDaniel’s face. He turned back to Emma. “I guess the only thing that really matters is that he didn’t want anything to do with your mom.”
“Oh.” Emma fretted her lower lip. He could see she was torn between relief and pity.
“Listen, give your mom a break tomorrow, will you? I know things have been rough between the two of you, and she seems tough as nails—but she needs you, Emma. Nobody means more to her than you.”
“Then why didn’t she listen to me? Leave my family the way I wanted it to be.”
“Maybe someday you’ll understand.” Part of Stone was afraid the kid already did. Deirdre had told him about the old yearbook Emma had been poring through, circling faces that might look like her. Please God, let the kid forget about the whole thing, now that Deirdre’s search had turned out to be such a disaster.
But nobody knew better than Jake that it was damned hard to shove something as elusive as curiosity back into a box once you’d set it free.
Jake groped for the right words to make her understand. “Ten years from now when all this stuff between you and your mom settles you’re going to have to look back on this. What do you want to feel? That you were right? That you paid your mom back for upsetting the family? Or that you loved her the way she loves you—even when it hurts?”
Emma looked away from him, her cheeks turning red. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s up to you, kid.” Jake looked down into Deirdre’s daughter’s face. “Just remember you’ll have to live with whatever you decide for a very long time.” He started to turn, walk out into the night. But Emma caught his arm, stopped him.
“Do you think Mom should, well…be alone? Maybe you should stay with her.”
Stone stared at Emma, astonished. “You were mad as hell last time we stayed together.”
“It was just…just a shock. She’d never done anything like that before. And it’s still hypocritical, you know? Lecturing me like she did, and then…”
Stone stayed quiet, letting the kid piece together what she wanted to say.
“But you know that first time I met you? When I maneuvered you into going to the restaurant with us?”
“Before you figured out that I was ruining your life?”
“Before I knew Mom lied to me. And…whatever. What really matters is why I tricked you in the first place.”
“Why was that, Emma?” Stone asked, loving the kid for her courage, her honesty.
“All I’ve ever wanted was to go to New York, you know? Be onstage. But it wasn’t until I got the acceptance letter from my drama school that I realized what that would mean…for Mom, you know?”
“You got your letter?”
“Yeah. A couple of weeks ago.”
“Your mom never mentioned it.”
“I never told her.”
“Why not? She’ll be thrilled for you. So proud.”
“I know that. She’s built her whole life around me in the six years since she came back home. But she’s going to be all alone when I go. I guess part of me was hoping that you would, well, fill in the empty space I was going to leave behind.”
“I kind of figured it was s
omething like that. Then you realized who I was, what my job was and why your mom had hired me. That changed things, didn’t it?”
“Yeah. A lot of things. But…” Emma sucked in a deep breath. “Maybe you can’t help who you love, you know? I’m not as naive as I look. I know guys want sex. Is that all you wanted from Mom?”
“Are you asking me what my intentions are?”
“I guess I am.”
“Okay. I’ll give it to you straight. I’m in love with your mom. I want to marry her. That honorable enough for you?”
“Whoa. I don’t know how I feel about that. I mean, Mom always says be careful what you wish for because it might come true.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to get used to the idea. She’s not sure how she feels about all this, either.”
Emma hugged herself, the gesture so much like Deirdre’s it made Stone’s chest hurt. “Oh, she loves you. Believe me, casual sex isn’t my mom’s style. You know, she hasn’t had a date since we’ve lived here? And it’s not ’cause guys haven’t asked her.”
“I’m sure that’s true.”
“If you love her and all that, don’t you think you should take care of her better than this? I mean, cutting out on her now when she’s all torn up.”
“I’m not sure she wants me. And making trouble between the two of you isn’t what I had in mind.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you jumping her bones or anything, but if you could just hold her…” Emma’s eyes misted, wistful. “That’s what Drew does when I’m sad.”
“You care about Drew a lot, don’t you?”
“I love him.”
“First love…that’s a powerful thing,” Jake said, remembering the roller coaster his senior year in high school had been. God, what a ride. The end was rocky, most of them were. But Deirdre’s first love hadn’t just shuddered to a halt. It had crashed and burned, leaving her scarred forever.Emma’s memories of Drew someday would be far sweeter than that.
Stone hugged Emma, his voice soft. “Thank you. For letting me stay.”