“Jake, not here,” she whispered.
She had no idea he’d been untying her apron until he pulled it off and handed that to Selma, too. Then he picked her up, kissed her long and slow and sweet right in front of a diner full of people before he turned to Selma again.
“Can you call in someone to cover her shift?”
“Jake, put me down.” Carly made a half-hearted attempt to get out of his arms.
He ignored her.
“I’ve got a girl on standby,” Selma assured him over Carly’s protest.
“Great. Thanks, Selma.” He gave Selma a quick kiss on the cheek and then with Carly in his arms, headed for the front door.
The pudgy woman in powder-blue shorts and a matching oversized T-shirt grabbed hold of his sleeve. Jake turned with Carly still in his arms.
“Hey, aren’t you that private investigator who was on the television news a while back? I’d like to talk to you about finding my husband. He’s behind on his child support and—”
“Sorry, ma’am. We’ve got a couple of pressing appointments.”
He moved past the woman, through the rest of the crowd, and opened the wide glass door to the street. Late summer’s heat hit them as they left the air-conditioned diner. Carly had given up trying to get him to put her down and wrapped her arms around his neck.
As they stood there beneath the shade of the Plaza Diner’s crisp, blue canvas awning, with the gulls calling out across the street at the park and a steady stream of tourists strolling by, she ignored everyone and everything but Jake as she smiled into his eyes.
“Pressing appointments?” she asked.
“Right. First we’ve got to head over to Etta’s to pick up our boy, and then we’re due over to the Potters’ office to sign some escrow papers. I made a ridiculously low offer on the house, and the owners accepted it. I was hoping you’d give me an answer before I went ahead with the deal, but you were running out of time.”
“How much time did I have left?”
“Actually, only a few hours.”
“What if I hadn’t left the painting for you today?”
He tightened his hold.
“Hey, I’m a P.I. I’d have gotten an answer out of you before time ran out.”
Epilogue
Late October
A BITTERLY COLD WIND SWEPT DOWN OFF THE MOUNTAINS in the distance as Carly stood beside Jake in a deserted cemetery on the outskirts of Albuquerque. She slipped one hand through the crook of his arm and with the other, pulled her coat tighter, trying to ward off the long-forgotten chill of the high desert plains.
A field of grave sites stretched before them, ninety percent of them were marked with small, nondescript white crosses, but the grave at their feet had a newly laid granite headstone.
They stood side by side in silence. There was no need for words.
Jake stared out toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains while Carly studied the stone, reading the inscription over and over.
CAROLINE GRAHAM
1974–1993
FRIEND AND SISTER
“Do you like it?” Jake asked softly. “I wasn’t certain what you would have chosen, but I wanted to surprise you with this, so I tried to pick a design I thought you’d like.”
“It’s perfect. How did you find her?”
“Same way I found you. Persistence.” He gave her a few more moments and then asked, “Are you ready to go?”
She nodded, tightened her hold on his arm, finally able to look away from the headstone.
“You’re so quiet. What are you thinking?” he asked as they started walking slowly toward the rental car he’d parked nearby.
“That I’d love to be able to stay here for a while and paint, maybe walk around Santa Fe, take in the colors, the sights and sounds. The landscape is so raw. It’s bleak; it’s beautiful. Look at the way the passing clouds change the colors of the desert floor as they move over the land.”
“We’ll come back,” he promised. “We’ll bring Christopher and stay a while. How about over Christmas vacation?”
She shook her head. “It’s our first Christmas together. Our first with Anna, and with your family, too. I want to be home.”
“Somehow I knew you’d say that. Do you think she’ll be ready to hand Chris over when we get back to California tomorrow?”
He’d only taken the weekend off. Starting up another office in San Luis Obispo took a lot of his time, but he was no longer as driven as he’d been when he started out before. Now he had Carly and Christopher, and he was bound and determined to give as much time to his marriage as needed to keep them both happy.
And he had the house overlooking the water to look forward to after the drive home through the canyon.
The house. Carly. And Chris.
Carly was smiling as he opened her car door. “Did you see the look on Anna’s face when we dropped off Beauty, too? I’d say she probably has Chris’ things already packed.”
“I think you’re right.”
He waited when she paused to look back over the field of graves one final time, then she got into the car and he closed the door.
As he started the engine and slowly pulled away from the curb, he looked over at his wife and thought he heard her whisper, “Good-bye, Caroline. Thank you.”
Read on for a sneak peek at the next fabulous novel in Jill Marie Landis’s Twilight Cove trilogy
HEAT WAVE
On sale now
TY CHANDLER HAD EXPECTED SOMEONE . . . WELL, SOMEONE larger and definitely sturdier. A female version of Columbo maybe. Certainly not this petite, exotic, and undeniably sensual young woman in a wafer-thin white tank top and wrinkled plaid shorts. The top of her head barely came to his chin.
He waited as Kat Vargas gave him another slow once over, finally decided he wasn’t a serial killer, and slipped into the empty rocker beside him.
Her shoulder-length, jet-black hair glistened and moved every time she rocked. A slight smattering of golden freckles dusted the bridge of her button nose. But it was her eyes that arrested him most. They sparkled with an unspoken challenge, as if warning him to not even think about getting close.
He watched, unable to look away as she crossed her shapely legs and rested her bandaged hand in her lap. Stella Gibbs had explained that Kat was in town to house-sit and recoup from an injury, but if Stella knew any of the details, she hadn’t shared them.
From the moment the lovely Ms. Vargas opened the door, her expression had remained guarded. There was an edge to her ready stance, a studied distance broken now and then by a glimpse of curiosity and a flash of warmth in her eyes.
She remained silent, patiently waiting for him to begin. Ty shifted and glanced out at the ocean, trying to decide where to start.
He wasn’t exactly sure how much Kat Vargas really needed to know before he could convince her to help. Maybe it was best to tell her everything.
“Until a few months ago, I lived in Alaska. I moved up there right after high school and stayed for nineteen years. Eventually I established my own fishing and hunting camp and grew the business. Three months ago, my mom, who still lived here in Twilight, called and told me she was dying.”
He felt the pain of that phone call again, the shock of the cold reality in his mom’s voice. Barbara Chandler, a born leader who was always larger than life, was mortal after all.
“The prognosis was six weeks. She only lasted three, which in many ways was a blessing.” He looked out at the ocean again. “Once Mom learned her illness was terminal, she refused more treatment and began to put her affairs in order.”
It was just like Barbara Chandler to want to be in control right up to the end. She directed while he sorted her personal belongings into boxes and told him to deliver them to close friends, thrift shops, and the local women’s shelters.
She even had a Realtor waiting in the wings to sell the house. She’d taken charge of everything, not because she wanted to spare him, but more than likely because she didn�
��t trust him to do it the way she wanted it done.
Though Kat Vargas sat patiently, listening intently, he could see that she hadn’t relaxed. She struck him as someone who, like him, didn’t ordinarily like to sit still, let alone wait around for anything or anyone.
“What about your dad?” she asked.
“He died when I was fifteen.” There was nothing more he wanted to tell her about his dad. Thom Chandler had checked out of their lives a long time before he died.
“Both my parents are still living—in Hawaii.” She spoke softly, almost as if thinking out loud.
Hawaii. That explained her striking, exotic look. Her golden brown skin, the slight almond shape of her eyes.
“You’re lucky then, to have them both.” He saw a flash of unspoken questions in her eyes—questions of someone who has never lost a parent.
How did you get through it?
What will I do when it happens?
What will life be like without them?
But her concern had barely blossomed before he watched her hide it. Besides, he hadn’t come to philosophize. He’d come seeking help.
“My mom was very driven. Always in control. She’d been active around Twilight Cove all her life. President of the P.T.A., head of the Booster Club when I was in high school. For years she served on the boards for town beautification and the Twilight Historical Society.” There had been standing room only at her memorial. She had lots of friends and associates, but she had never really communicated with them very well. She was better at giving orders than listening. Better at running organizations then holding a family together.
“One day, weak as she was, she insisted on going to the park to sit in the sun. She wanted to watch people doing ordinary, everyday things—all the things she’d never do again. She wanted to watch the kids playing in the park.”
He’d bundled her up and taken her to Plaza Park on the bluff above Twilight Cove. The sun was shining, the air crystal clear after three days of rain. He’d never forget that day.
He bought ice cream cones that neither of them finished.
She took his hand, a gesture unlike her, and told him the secret she’d kept for nineteen years. It wasn’t the kind of last-breath, deathbed revelation of feature films—nothing as dramatic as that. Just a few words softly spoken on a sunny afternoon. Words that altered his life forever. Words that left his world totally shaken.
“You’re a father, you know.” Her voice was rough and dry. She’d worn a jewel-toned kaftan, her baldness concealed beneath a garish, orange knit turban. Gulls screamed as they soared and dove overhead.
“You’re a father, you know.”
“What did you say, Mom?” He had wondered if the medication was affecting her mind.
“You have a child out in the world somewhere. Amy’s child. And yours.”
Kat Vargas had grown very still. Ty focused on the present, on the attractive young woman beside him.
“My mom confessed that my high school sweetheart had been pregnant with my child when we broke up. Her name was Amy Simmons. She was from the other side of town and she ran with a fast crowd while I hung out with the jocks. We dated our junior and senior years, but my mom never liked her.”
They’d lost their virginity to each other in the back of his Volkswagen van the night of the Homecoming game. Back then, he thought they’d be together forever.
“During our senior year, Amy got into alcohol and drugs. I was a seventeen-year-old kid, in love, scared, confused. I couldn’t fight Amy’s addiction for her, so I broke up with her, hoping that might shake her up enough to make her stop.
“She ran away with a girlfriend before graduation and moved down to Southern California where they met someone who took them to River Ridge, a compound in the Angeles Crest Forest. It was a phony drug rehab. They promised success using New Age techniques.”
Ty shoved his hand through his hair with a sigh. Kat listened intently, showing no reaction.
“I went after her, but she refused to come back. My mom was so glad it was over. I got in my van and headed north and didn’t stop driving until I ended up in Alaska.
“Later, I tried to contact Amy through her parents, but they had moved and I never heard from then again.”
He’d lost Amy and, for a while, lost himself in the wilderness. Then he’d picked up the pieces.
“I worked odd jobs, construction on log homes, a guide for outback tours. Eventually I started Kamp Kodiak, a fishing and hunting camp. I worked my ass off turning it into a lucrative business. Amy was out of my life for good, until my mom told me about our child.”
“How old?” Kat’s smooth, even voice startled him out of his revery.
“I just turned thirty-seven.”
Her lips instantly curved into a half smile. She shook her head and rolled her eyes.
“Not you. How old is your kid?”
“Nineteen.”
“Boy or girl?”
“I have no idea. All I know is that Mrs. Simmons told her about the pregnancy right after I left town. When I’d gone after Amy, she wasn’t showing yet. I had no idea.”
“So your mom knew all the time?”
“Yeah. She knew.”
“Why did she wait all these years to tell you? Why would she keep her own grandchild a secret?”
“Believe me, I’ve asked myself that a million times. She knew I’d do whatever it took to be with Amy. That if I knew, I’d always be connected to her through our child. My mother wanted to spare me the heartache of ending up stuck with way more than I could handle.”
Kat Vargas leaned toward him. Rested her elbow on the arm of her chair, propped her chin in her hand. “Could you have handled it?”
“I’d have damn well tried. I’d have done something. It was my kid for Christ’s sake.”
Satisfied with his answer, Kat leaned back. She could see that he was emotionally drained. He rested his head against the chair and slowly set the rocker in motion.
That he was an outdoorsman was evident in his rugged good looks, his deep tan, the not unattractive creases at the corners of his eyes that came from squinting against the sunlight.
He filled the rocker, made it seem insubstantial for a man of his height and build. His gaze slid past her as he focused on the ocean once again, staring out to sea with such longing that she had a feeling it was the way he’d look at a woman he hungered for.
She contented herself with studying the breadth of his shoulders, the way his polo shirt clung to his well-defined upper arms like a second skin.
Jake had told her to get out and meet someone interesting. Ty Chandler was that, but he was exactly the kind of guy she wasn’t looking for. Justin Parker had been handsome, too. Way too handsome. Her former fiancé was the kind of guy women openly admired.
She wasn’t going down that road again.
Her injured hand began to ache. She lightly rubbed the bandage, working her wrist back and forth. Chandler suddenly stopped rocking, walked over, and leaned against the low porch wall.
When he noticed the brass wind chimes lying on the railing, he picked it up and they clattered against each other. It only took him an instant to locate the empty hook in the ceiling above his head.
“Want me to hang this for you?”
“Please don’t!” Kat realized she had overreacted and softened her tone. “No, thanks. It was driving me crazy so I took it down.”
He set the wind chime back on the rail, went back to the rocker, and sat down. Leaning forward, he planted his elbows on his knees again and threaded his fingers together, staring into her eyes.
“So, do you think you can help me?”
“You’re not looking for one of those little dimpled cherubs on a Pampers commercial, you know. You’re going to end up with a nineteen-year-old, somebody with baggage— and from what you’ve told me about the mother, probably plenty of it.
“Mom was on drugs and alcohol. The kid could have severe physical and/or learning disabilities. Ma
ybe he even followed in Mom’s footsteps.” She tapped her bare foot, speculating. “You don’t even know if your old girlfriend kept the kid or not. Maybe she gave the baby up for adoption. Maybe even made a little drug money that way.”
She saw him blanch. “I’m sorry for having to be so blunt, but you need to know you might be opening a real can of worms.”
“I’ve thought of that,” he admitted.
“All of it?”
He nodded, even more solemn. “I know it’ll be an adjustment.”
“To say the least.”
“Hey, I’ve been fortunate in my life. I hate to think there is a child of mine out in the world somewhere who needs me or what I can give him . . . or her. I just hope it’s not too late.”
Their eyes met and Kat found herself having to look away from the raw emotion on his face.
She doubted a man like Ty Chandler had been living like a monk since his breakup with a high school sweetheart. “How does your wife feel about all of this? What about your kids?”
He stopped rocking. “I was married for a while after moving to Alaska, but it only lasted five years. Victoria got sick of Alaska and of me devoting so much time to the business. I wanted to build a life, start a family. She wanted to move home to the east coast and go back to college.”
He leaned on the arm of the chair and continued. “The Chandlers have a long history here in Twilight. We go back generations. I’m the last of the line. I want to find my child, whatever that might mean, and share our history.”
“I’ve seen these things go bad,” she warned, compelled to be totally honest. “Reunions like this aren’t the same as the ones shown on Oprah or Montel. Not everyone ends up happily reunited.” She had seen searches like this end in heartache. She hated getting caught up in anything that had to do with kids.
Parental abductions, guardianship and custody battles— those were the cases she’d handed over to Jake when they’d been working together in Long Beach. She made it her policy to stay away from anything to do with children because she didn’t have the heart for it.
Give her a cheating husband to track down and she was happy, but long-lost kids? She didn’t need to witness that kind of heartache. It hit too close to home.
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