Feeling as though he were in enemy territory, he took a quick look around. He’d only been in this room . . . her room . . . once before. The night they’d come to tell her folks they were getting married.
The room hadn’t changed much, either. The walls were still painted a deep green and bookshelves stuffed with paperbacks were painted a paler shade of the same color. Her bed was covered in a quilt that looked homemade and the same framed posters of Paris and Hawaii hung on the walls. He remembered teasing her about the disparate pictures, but she’d told him then that fantasy trips all had one thing in common. The fantasy.
But Sam had been his only fantasy.
And look where that had gotten them.
Gritting his teeth, he said, “You sent this letter to me, my mother returned it to you along with the divorce papers.” Just like Sam’d insisted at the inn. Saying it aloud didn’t make it any easier to handle. But there it was. “When you signed and returned them, Mother forwarded them on to me—with your signature on them.” He shoved one hand through his hair, then let it drop to his side. Helpless. God, he’d always hated that feeling and right now it was choking him. “I thought you wanted the divorce.”
She laughed shortly, harshly and the sound slapped at him. “Perfect.”
He walked up behind her. Close enough to touch. But of course, he didn’t. “She played us both.”
“And Emma?” Two words—a world of feelings. She kept her gaze locked on the nearly hypnotic dance of the leaves beyond her window. It was as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Her hands fisted and unfisted at her sides as if she were subconsciously looking for something to grab onto—and couldn’t find it.
Jeff moved to one side of her, keeping a safe distance from the energy and fury pumping off her in thick, emotion-packed waves. He leaned against the wall and watched her as he said, “Mother brought Emma to me right after she was born.”
“God.” She swayed slightly and he almost reached out to steady her. Would have if he’d thought for a minute his touch would be welcome. Yet Jeff knew she’d rather topple onto the floor than take any help from him at the moment.
“She said you gave her the baby. Said that you didn’t want any part of me.” And the pain he’d felt that day came racing back to remind him just how much caring for someone that deeply could hurt. Even beyond his too-stupid-to-live teenage pride, Sam had torn something from him he’d never gotten back. She’d taken his belief that he could be wanted for his own sake.
Sam’s gaze snapped to his. “And you believed her?”
He stomped on the rise of temper inside. “Why wouldn’t I? I tried to call our apartment but you were gone.”
“I moved out when you left.”
“So I guessed.” But he didn’t tell her how her leaving had terrified him. “I called here, but your sisters wouldn’t give me a number to contact you.”
“I told them not to.”
“So.” He nodded sharply. “We were running in circles, going nowhere . . .”
“And your mother swooped in on her broom and finished us off.”
“I’d argue with that, but it’s too close to true.”
“Close?”
He blew out a breath of pure frustration. “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry that I got Emma? I’m not.”
She shook her head hard enough that her hair swung out in an arc around her head. The last of the sunlight caught it and inflamed the strands, making that reddish-brown mass look like dark fire.
“You left me,” she said.
“It was a break,” he argued, feeling the futility of it even as he kept right on swinging.
“Right.” She snorted a laugh. “Four months in London. Without your new wife. Heck of a break.”
“I took a course at Cambridge, for chrissake.” Jeff came away from the wall. He shoved both hands into his pockets. He hated feeling as though he were treading water in a tank where the water level kept rising. “We needed time apart. You know that.” When she refused to acknowledge the truth of it, he snapped, “I needed space.”
“Time away from me, you mean.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe that’s what it boiled down to. Hell, I didn’t know what else to do.”
She looked up at him, old pain and accusation glittering in her pale blue eyes. “We should have communicated. You should have talked to me.”
The absurdity of that had him laughing out loud, though it didn’t make him feel any better. “Jesus, listen to you. I was nineteen,” he said, keeping a tight rein on the anger churning within. “I didn’t do talking.”
“You could have tried.”
But back then, Jeff knew, he hadn’t been interested in talking. Any time he was near Sam, all he’d been able to think about was stripping her out of her clothes and tossing her onto the nearest flat surface. Amazing how some feelings never really go away.
With that thought came blind panic and he surrendered to the adult version of sticking his tongue out. “Yeah? Well, so could you.”
Astonished, she blinked at him. “Are you seriously going to try to say that to me?”
He knew what she was talking about and he had an answer for it. “Yelling doesn’t count as communicating.”
“It does in my family.”
“My family’s different.”
“Ha. Well, I guess that’s a fair statement.” She grabbed the envelope from the dresser top where he’d tossed it and shoved it back into the top drawer of an antique chest. “My family shouts. Yours lies and steals children.”
“She didn’t steal Emma.” Christ, had he really come around to trying to defend his mother? “You gave her up.”
“God,” Sam muttered, crossing her arms over her chest and holding on tightly enough to make her knuckles white. “I could cheerfully kill your mother right now.”
“Too late,” he said tightly. “She died a couple of years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No you’re not.”
“No,” she said, nodding. “I’m not. I’m frustrated. I’d like to look her in the eye and then spit in it. I’d like to run her down in the street, then back up and do it again. I’d like to—”
He understood. Hell, he’d like nothing better than to face down the old bat himself. But he couldn’t. And since it was pointless and he knew Sam, Jeff interrupted the litany before she could get on a roll. “Why’d you give Emma up?”
She blew out a breath and tightened the death grip on her own arms even further. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“No choice?” he countered. Waving both hands to encompass the big old house and the family she’d told him so much about, he said, “What happened to the great Marconis? They wouldn’t support you? They made you give Emma up?”
“No.”
That wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted more. Wanted to get into the head of the eighteen-year-old girl she’d been and find out just why she’d thrown everything away. Why she’d been so eager to lose not only him, but their child. He told himself it shouldn’t matter to him. It was nine years ago. They were different now. He was different, now. But it did matter.
Too damn much.
“Then why?” he demanded, grabbing her upper arm and pulling her around to face him. “Why would you give her up? You used to talk about having a houseful of kids. I remember because it terrified me. I can’t imagine anything making you walk away from your child. Our child.”
“I don’t owe you an explanation.” She released her death grip on her own arms and used both hands to push at his chest until she was free of him. But Jeff could still feel her. His fingertips still hummed with that too-brief burst of electricity that arced between them.
It had always been like that with Sam. Instant awareness, the buzz of lust and the thirst for more. Once had never been enough when it came to Sam. They’d walked through most days like sleepwalkers because they’d been awake half the night devouring each other. Those memories were suddenly all too vivid in his mind
, and with a hell of an effort, he deliberately shut them down.
Get a grip, he told himself. This wasn’t about him and Sam. Not now. It hadn’t been for a long time. There was no “them” anymore.
“Maybe you don’t,” he admitted, his voice cool, reserved, as he fought for his legendary control and then found it, wrapping it around him like a cashmere blanket. “But you sure as hell owe Emma one and I’d like to hear it.”
She stiffened. From the tips of her toes to the top of her head. It was as if she’d suddenly been nailed to a wall. She was so still, the only way he was sure she was drawing breath was that she hadn’t toppled over from lack of oxygen. Her features were frozen, but her eyes were alive with memory. With pain. Regret.
And for a minute, Jeff felt bad about asking. But dammit, didn’t he have a right to know? He’d spent the last nine years thinking that the woman he’d thought he knew had been a stranger. He’d believed that what they’d felt, shared, enjoyed, had been a lie.
Didn’t he at least deserve to know the truth? Didn’t they both deserve that?
She inhaled sharply. “What have you told Emma about me?”
He sighed. Apparently, her truth was going to wait for another day. Pushing one hand through his hair again, he answered, “I said her mother wanted to keep her, but she couldn’t. I told her you loved her.”
Sam’s shoulders drooped as if the weight of the world had just slipped off, leaving her exhausted. “Thanks for that much.”
“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Emma.”
She nodded. “Thanks anyway.”
“You’re welcome.”
She leaned forward, unlocked the window, and lifted the sash. Instantly, a cold sea breeze darted inside, as if it had been poised on the other side of the glass, awaiting its chance. The muted roar of the ocean sounded like a heartbeat and the wind chime jangled with abandon.
“I want to see her,” Sam said, never taking her gaze off the gnarled trunk and branches of the tree in front of her.
“You have seen her.” Stupid. He knew just what she meant and he should have been expecting it. But then, how could he have? He’d assumed all these years that Sam wasn’t interested in their daughter. Now . . . things were different. Now, she’d want to know the child. Spend time with her.
And he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
What was this going to do to Emma? How would it affect his daughter’s life? “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“A good idea?” She whipped her head around and pinned him with a steely look that stabbed right into his heart. “I don’t even know her, Jeff. She’s my daughter.”
“She’s my daughter too and, dammit, I’m not going to have her life disrupted.”
“Disrupted?” She turned to face him. The breeze lifted her russet hair into a dance around her head. Her shoulders were squared and stiff and her chin was tilted at a defiant angle that he remembered. She looked like an ancient warrior about to fight to the death and Jeff knew that nothing between them was going to be settled today. Moreover, nothing would be decided without a battle.
But as Emma’s father—the only parent she’d ever known, no matter whose fault it was—it was up to him to protect her.
“You think I want to hurt her?” Sam asked. “My God, you’ve had her for eight years. I just found her again.”
“It’s not that easy, Sam.”
“I’ll tell you how easy it is,” she said quietly, but firmly. “You want me to sign new divorce papers, right?”
Alarm bells went off in the back of his head, but what the hell could he do about them? He had no choice but to hear her out and brace for the worst. “Yeah, of course.”
“Well, I won’t sign.”
Damned if he couldn’t practically hear the first salvo opening the war. “What?”
“I’m not going to sign. Not until I’ve spent time with Emma. Not until we figure out a way between us that I can be a part of her life.”
Something hard and ugly settled in the pit of his stomach and Jeff wasn’t proud of it. But Emma was his daughter. They were a team. A unit. And the thought of suddenly having to share the little girl with her mother hit him hard. It shamed him to admit even to himself that it was panic—and jealousy—rattling around inside him like a marble in an empty coffee can. He didn’t want Sam getting to know Emma because he might lose a piece of his daughter’s heart to her.
And he didn’t know if he could take that.
Sam watched him and he wondered for a moment if she could tell what he was thinking. Then she spoke and he was sure of it.
“You’re going to have to get used to sharing her, Jeff.”
“Or?”
“Or,” she said, giving him a smile that had nothing at all to do with humor, “we stay married.”
The threat hung brazenly in the air and he could see that she was pleased with her well-aimed shot. So he could hardly be blamed for enjoying the look on her face when he leaned in close and said, “That can’t happen. I’m engaged.”
“You bet, Grace. Monday morning, without fail.” Jo nodded as she talked, as though the older woman on the other end of the phone line could actually see her. It didn’t pay to take chances. For all she knew, Grace Van Horn was clairvoyant. The woman did always seem to call the house at the worst possible time. What else was that but a psychic link to the universe? “Right. Sam will handle the details and the work crews will start arriving about eight.”
Grace Van Horn, rich, irritating, and the customer who was destined to be the reason the next three months were already being called the summer of hell, kept talking, outlining her newest ideas for making their lives miserable. Great. Grace had already changed her mind three times and they hadn’t even started work yet.
But they were used to this, Jo reminded herself. She and her sisters had been dealing with customers and potential clients for years.
Hank Marconi had started Marconi Construction when his daughters were little girls. They’d always gone to job sites with Papa and by the time they were teenagers, the Marconi girls could hold their own with any construction crew. Eventually, they’d all joined the business permanently, each of them with their own specialties, and Papa couldn’t have been prouder.
Although dealing with clients was almost second nature now for the three sisters, Grace was a special case. A blinding headache burst into full-blown life behind Jo’s eyes. Might as well get used to it, she thought. She’d be living on caffeine and aspirin for the next three months.
“Got it,” she said, agreeing now to anything, since she knew full well that by the time Monday morning rolled around, Grace would have updates on her updates. “Circular staircase from the patio to the second story.”
No helicopter pad? she wanted to ask, but didn’t, silently congratulating herself on her restraint. Really, Grace was great. Fun to talk to. A little weird, but weird was fun. Usually. Until she made a mess of Jo’s files. All of her neatly compiled records and estimates and—She sighed and turned toward the coffeepot on the counter, suddenly needing sustenance. Empty. Perfect.
“Right. The wrought-iron balcony railings should be yellow to match the house.” She made another note on her Van Horn file, for all the good it would do her.
Honest to God, if Jo had Cash Hunter in front of her right now, she’d drop-kick him into the next century. If he hadn’t done his voodoo act on Tina, then the Marconis would have a real honest-to-God secretary to deal with Grace. But then, Jo thought wildly as Grace rattled on and on and on, maybe that’s why Tina quit. Maybe it hadn’t had anything to do with Cash’s mysterious sexual hypnotism powers.
Something to consider.
Heavy footsteps pounded down the stairs and Jo shifted her gaze to the doorway between the kitchen and living room. It sounded as if trained elephants were marching on parade. But it was worse than elephants.
It was a giant rat.
Jeff Hendricks stormed down the last of the stairs, across the r
oom, and out the front door like a man on a mission. Jo ran across the kitchen, still clutching the receiver of the ancient blue wall phone to her ear. The coiled blue cord brought her up short with a jolt strong enough to wrench her neck, just before the doorway. But she was close enough to see Sam, right behind Jeff, and she didn’t look good, either. Temper vibrated all around her like a downed electrical wire jumping and skittering against the street.
Grace was still talking, but Jo had stopped listening. It wasn’t only temper chasing her younger sister. There was something else. Something deeper. Something big.
Turning, she walked back across the kitchen, fighting free of the twisted blue cord as it tried to wrap itself around her.
“Right, Grace,” she interrupted the older woman firmly. “I know. Don’t worry. Monday. We’ll be there.”
She hung up, despite the fact that the older woman was still talking. She’d pay for that come Monday, but right now, it didn’t seem important.
“I can’t believe this,” Sam was saying, standing on the threshold and facing her past. “After nine years, you’re still reacting in the same way? You just walk away?”
“Why the hell do you care?” Jeff shot back.
Jo moved quietly into the living room, listening openly. The word “secret” didn’t exist in the Marconi universe.
“You’re engaged,” Sam shouted, throwing both hands high and wide before letting them slap down against her sides. She couldn’t even believe this. She’d been feeling like the scarlet letter–bearer for dating, for God’s sake, and her husband was engaged?
Her brain spinning, she felt the world lurch crazily to one side, then right itself when Jeff started talking again. He stood at the bottom of the front steps and looked up at her. “We’ve been ‘divorced’ for nine years.”
“Yeah,” she argued, knowing that it made no sense, “but now I find out we’re still married and you’re engaged to somebody else all in the same day. Excuse me for needing a minute or two to process.”
He laughed, looked around the empty yard as if checking to make sure they were still alone before saying, “You’re amazing. You don’t want to be married to me and you’re pissed that somebody else does.”
And Then Came You Page 5