by Pamela Toth
“You do know who they are, don’t you, the people who gave me up?” she demanded, her heart thudding in her chest.
“Whenever possible, we do like to have the records of both parents.” The frown was back, causing a crease between his brows. If he kept it up, he’d be looking at Botox injections someday. “If you need another copy of your medical history, we’ll be happy to provide one. My assistant can give you a form to fill out.”
Suddenly breathless with anticipation, Emma pressed her palm to her heart. “I guess I didn’t really take the time to make myself clear,” she said. “It’s not just the medical information that I’m after, it’s everything.”
His expression shifted, his frown lines deepening, and he seemed to lean away from her in his chair. “What exactly do you mean by everything?”
Emma balled her hands together in her lap. She wasn’t going to give up now. “I need to know the names of my biological parents so I can find out if they’re still alive.” Her voice rose. “I might have siblings out there, family I never knew existed.”
Contacting them would be a huge first step in taking back control of her life.
He had already started to shake his head before she finished speaking. “I’m sorry, but what you’re asking is impossible. This agency can’t help you.”
Emma’s mouth fell open as she stared at him, stunned into momentary silence.
“What do you mean?” she finally croaked as his refusal sank into her consciousness. “You just admitted that you have their names.”
He spread his hands, palms up, in a helpless gesture. “That’s true,” he agreed, “but your file is confidential.”
“Okay, I understand.” Quickly Emma unzipped her purse. “I’ve got picture ID.”
Before she could open her wallet, he surprised her again, this time by resting his hand lightly on hers. His touch was warm, but something about his gesture made her shiver as an icy chill slid down her spine.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again as he let her go. “It’s not just your confidentiality that our agency is sworn to protect.”
His gaze held hers. “This was not an open adoption, so the only thing I’m allowed to share with you is your medical history.”
Emma stared at him blankly. “But they’re my parents. They’d want me to know who they are!”
Intellectually she knew that wasn’t always true, but her emotions wouldn’t let her believe it could apply to her. She wasn’t going to be stonewalled! Panic shot through her. If she lunged across his desk and grabbed the folder, would she be able to read its contents before he got it away from her?
“Emma,” he said quietly, startling her with his use of her first name, “I’ve read your entire file very carefully. There were no provisions made to give you contact information if you were ever to ask. Quite the contrary, there is a statement insisting on absolute privacy. I’m sorry.”
She wasn’t willing to give up, but she could tell by the set of his jaw that threats or pressure wouldn’t change his mind. He appeared to be giving her time to absorb her disappointment.
“I see,” she said, trying to sound reasonable.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Would you like some water?”
“Yes, please.” Think, she commanded herself while he went over to a sideboard and poured a glass for her. Frantically trying to come up with something to change his mind, she stared with fascination at the large blown-glass vase sitting proudly on a side table.
Talk about ugly!
When he came back and handed her the water, she took an obligatory sip before setting it down. “Thank you.”
He was watching her closely, as though he expected her to do something crazy. Was there a secret alarm that he’d activated, calling for security? Somehow she doubted it. With his height and athletic build, he appeared more than capable of handling whatever she could dish out.
“Is there anything else I can do?” he asked when the silence began to lengthen between them.
Anything else?
“Surely there’s another channel I can explore,” she said. “Some person I can talk to, an appeal process, something, in order to find out what I need?”
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid the buck stops with me.”
Suddenly she had an idea. “You can contact them for me. They have a right to know that I’m looking for them, so they can give you permission to show me my file.”
She was babbling, but she didn’t care. “I’ll swear on the Bible that I won’t bother them if they don’t want me to,” she promised. “But society has changed a lot in the last twenty-seven years. Maybe they meant to revoke the ‘no contact’ order, but they forgot all about it. You could ask them.”
“That’s not possible.” He looked genuinely regretful. “I’m sorry.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” she demanded, her frustration bubbling over.
“I know it sounds trite, but you have to accept the things you can’t change,” he said, spreading his hands wide. “I wish I could offer something more, but I can’t.”
“Accept?” Her voice rose like a hot-air balloon. “You want me to accept what I can’t change?” She leaped to her feet, barely noticing that her purse had dropped to the floor, and leaned over Morgan Davis to look right into his killer blue eyes.
They widened slightly.
“Let me tell you what I’ve had to accept lately.” She stuck her hand under his nose, fingers spread, and began ticking off items.
“I couldn’t change my miscarriages or the divorce that followed.” She tapped two fingers. “How about the layoff from my job as a school counselor? How was I supposed to change that?” There went another finger. “Unfortunately, none of the other districts around here are hiring, either, and I have bills to pay.”
She hesitated, then decided that deserved a finger, too. “Maybe my creditors will have to accept not getting any money from me until I find another job, huh?”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off ruthlessly. “If all that wasn’t enough, I found out that I’m not even who I thought I was.”
She waggled her splayed hand at him. “How can you tell me that not knowing my parents’ names is just one more thing I have to accept?”
For just an instant he looked genuinely horrified before he quickly masked his expression. When he got to his feet, he was a head taller than Emma, who was forced to retreat.
“I wish there was something I could do,” he said with apparently limitless patience.
“But you’re the director,” she cried. “I know you could make an exception if you really wanted to.”
“No, I can’t.”
Stubborn ox! She had failed at so many things lately, being a wife, a mother, a successful counselor. How could she go away from here empty-handed?
Normally she hated whiners, but she was running out of options. “No one else would have to find out,” she wheedled softly. “I’d never let on where I got the information, I swear, please.”
“Ms. Wright,” he said.
Back to formality, she noticed.
“You may not believe me,” he continued, “but I truly can understand your disappointment. However, this agency has entered into a contract with the people who entrusted you to us for placement in the first place. It’s a binding legal document that I am not willing or able to violate.”
Emma began to steam. Why had he told her the information was only a few feet away—to taunt her? How sadistic was that?
How could this petty bureaucrat in his fancy suit, sitting in his corner office like some potentate in his ivory tower, claim to know what she was feeling?
She had to try one last time, just in case he was beginning to weaken. “Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and rocked back on the heels of what were no doubt very expensive shoes. “If you want to send me your résumé, I could ask around,” he suggested with obvious reluctance. “Have you chec
ked with the employment agencies here in Portland?”
“No!” Emma exclaimed, her frustration finally breaking through as she threw up her hands. “That’s not the help I meant, and you know it!”
He shook his head. “Eventually you’ll adjust to the idea that you were adopted by two people who wanted a baby very much,” he insisted. “They should have told you a lot sooner, but they didn’t. There it is and you can’t change it.”
If he said it was time to move on, she was going to slug him. Instead he shrugged.
“I’ve been doing this for a long while,” he continued, apparently encouraged by her silence. “The adoption process isn’t something that people go through unless they’re desperate for a child. It’s expensive and time-consuming. Their privacy is shredded, their lives picked apart.”
He paused for breath while she gave him her iciest glare. “It sounds as though you’ve had a heck of a bumpy ride lately,” he said, “but you look like a capable woman. Give yourself time to accept once again the identity that you’ve grown up with and the parents who raised you.”
Emma’s fuse, which had often been regrettably short, finally blew at the platitudes he was trying to heap on her poor head.
She picked up her purse. “You may think, just because you run this agency, that you’re so wise and all-knowing about how it feels to be adopted, Mr. Davis.” She grabbed the knob and yanked open the door, too angry to thank him for his time.
“As for your advice, your platitudes and your pseudo sympathy,” she continued loudly, pointing at the big vase, “you can stick them right into that cheap, tacky glass monstrosity you seem to be so proud of.”
Head held high, she sailed out the door and slammed it shut behind her.
Morgan stood in the suddenly silent office with his hands braced on his hips. He understood the reasons behind the agency’s confidentiality regulations; he agreed with them one hundred percent.
In this case, Emma would never know that he was protecting her as well as her biological parents. She had been through enough without having to deal with a father who would never acknowledge her because the personal cost to him and his career might be more than he was willing to pay.
Between the shouting and door slamming, Emma Wright’s exit had been a noisy one. At any moment he expected his assistant to burst into his office in order to reassure herself that he was still in one piece.
Absently he looked around, his glance landing on the large blown-glass vase that Emma had disparaged on her way out the door.
“It’s not tacky,” he muttered defensively as he studied the blue and purple sculpture. Created in the manner of Dale Chihuly, a prominent Northwest artist, the twisting, fluid shape resembled either a man-eating flower or a floppy hat, depending on the angle from which it was viewed.
“And it sure as hell wasn’t cheap.” Morgan winced as he recalled his winning bid at the recent charity auction. Even so, he would have willingly given up the vase in exchange for a magical elixir to remove that wounded, lost look from Emma Wright’s sad gray eyes before she got angry and they turned to fire.
He had plenty of experience reading people, and the most satisfying part of his job was being able to help them. Emma’s case was an unusual one, but she didn’t know that and he couldn’t tell her. It was part of the reason she stayed in his mind.
It had nothing to do with the fact that she was hot.
Portland was full of hot women wearing vividly colored cropped tops, tight miniskirts and miles of bare skin that replaced winter’s long, dark raincoats and high boots. Quite a few of them worked right here in the hospital complex, but he’d gotten good at ignoring them.
His mother was always nagging him about giving her grandchildren, but he had rules about mixing business and pleasure. His rules hadn’t protected him from Emma. Her red knit top hadn’t been especially snug, nor did her short khaki skirt expose an unusual amount of her long, attractive legs. It was those big gray eyes that grabbed him first, eyes a man could dive into and get lost. Wavy brown hair he wanted to plunge his fingers into and muss all up.
Full lips…
His appreciation of Emma Wright as a woman wasn’t what she needed, so he forced himself to ignore the rush of heat as several rapid knocks sounded on his closed door.
“Enter,” he called out as he turned away from the window.
Just as he had expected, it was Cora who poked her head inside. “Everything okay?” she asked.
As much as he was tempted to ask her opinion, he didn’t have that luxury.
“Everything’s fine,” Morgan replied with a reassuring smile.
She studied him for another moment with a concerned expression, like a soccer mom checking for injuries, before she finally returned his smile with one of her own.
“Okay, good,” she said. “Since you don’t have any wounds in need of binding up, I’m going to lunch.”
Around the corner from the assistant’s station, Everett Baker had pressed himself against the wall so that he wouldn’t be discovered. He’d been on his way back to the accounting department where he worked when he heard the woman shouting at the director. Yelling and anger always made Everett’s stomach knot up. Absently he had rubbed slow circles on his midsection as he watched the pretty woman in the red shirt rush past Cora’s desk.
Why did women always start shouting when they got upset? If they would only ask nicely, they might get whatever it was that they wanted.
No one ever seemed to notice Everett, so he was able to watch the other employees whenever he had a break from his work. Sometimes he was able to listen to their conversations, if they talked loud enough. It helped him to figure out why some people had so many friends and others, like him, didn’t.
On a really good day, he would see Leslie Logan. She came often to Children’s Connection, looking like a modern-day queen. Everett had a special reason for watching her, but it wasn’t what anyone else might think. Leslie was old enough to be his mother.
Everett glanced at his watch and saw that it was time for him to get back to his desk before someone asked where he’d been. Nervously he pushed back his hair as he looked around to make sure that no one was watching him. The hall was empty and the pretty woman in red was gone. He was in the clear.
Two
Emma was still fuming over her appointment when she hurried to meet her friend Ivy Crosby for lunch at a little café near the computer company where Ivy worked. Even though her family owned Crosby Systems, Ivy never took for granted her position there, so Emma didn’t want to be late and hold her up.
She could see Ivy already seated at one of the small tables outside the café, her curly blond hair easy to spot, even in the middle of the lunch-hour crowd. She smiled and waved when she saw Emma coming down the sidewalk.
Despite her own foul mood, Emma waved back before she ducked inside and worked her way through the groups of people waiting to be seated.
“I’m joining my friend at an outside table,” she told the hostess.
Emma and Ivy had been roommates in college. Despite their polar-opposite personalities and wildly diverse backgrounds, they had made the effort to remain close.
When Emma got to the table, Ivy stood up and gave her a hug.
“I’m so glad to see you,” Ivy exclaimed. “I missed you.”
“You, too.” Emma returned her hug, blinking back tears. “I’m glad you’re back.”
Ivy’s perfume was a designer scent that cost more than Emma’s laptop, or her trendy outfit from an exclusive boutique. Beneath the affluent veneer, Ivy was the most genuine and loyal friend Emma had.
“How have you been?” Ivy asked after they had both sat down. “Fill me in.”
“Is there steam coming out of my ears?” Emma asked teasingly. Inwardly she was still fuming about her meeting.
Ivy’s blue eyes widened as she folded her hands on the menu. “Oh, dear,” she replied. “It sounds as if you’ve had a bad morning. Tell me what’s wrong.”
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br /> Emma was touched by her friend’s concern, but she knew how much Ivy hated being late back to work. She said it set a bad example for the other employees. “My problems will keep. Let’s order.” She glanced at her menu. “Then I want to hear about your trip. Where was it again that you went?”
“Lantanya.”
“I’ve never heard of it.” Emma wondered if she had imagined the momentary coolness in Ivy’s voice, even as the poetic name rolled off her tongue.
“No one has. It’s just a tiny principality located right on the Adriatic Sea.” She tossed her blond head. “Lunch is my treat. Don’t even bother to argue.”
Emma was embarrassed by Ivy’s generosity, but she was too broke to protest. After they had both ordered seafood salad and iced tea, she managed to smile at her friend.
“Did you meet a handsome prince while you were in Lantanya?” Emma asked teasingly.
To her surprise, Ivy’s expression froze. “I wasn’t there to play,” she said. “It was a business trip.”
“I was only kidding,” Emma replied, refusing to take offense. She was well aware of the stress Ivy felt when it came to her job. “So how was business?”
Ivy’s face relaxed again. “Crosby Industries is putting computer systems in the schools there. The children are so excited. It’s a heartwarming project.”
When it came to kids, Ivy was a cream puff. A few months ago, she had started volunteering at Portland General, working with the crack babies.
“That sounds great,” Emma replied. “Will you be going back?”
Again Ivy’s smile wavered and she glanced away. “I doubt it.”
“I suppose the country is pretty primitive,” Emma said. “Is it hot and barren?”
Before Ivy could reply, the waitress brought their salads and tall glasses of iced tea.
“Anything else?” the young girl asked. When both of them shook their heads, she left the check on the table and departed.