Jane's Gift

by Abby Gaines

He closed the double doors that separated the dining area from the living room, presumably so Daisy wouldn’t hear, before he strode across the polished floorboards.

  “I ought to run you out of town right now,” he growled, looming over her, as if he might make that threat a reality.

  She found her voice. “Cut it out, Kyle. If you have an anger management problem, go punch a wall. Don’t take it out on me, and don’t take it out on Daisy.”

  “Anger management?” he said, incredulous. But not, now she thought about it, angry. “I’m not arguing with you, Jane, I’m ordering you. Don’t share the sordid details of what you and Lissa got up to with my daughter.”

  It was a slap in the face, turning a harmless girls’ night out into something sordid, just because of who she was. “You think that by telling Daisy that her mom climbed a window, I’m setting your daughter up for a career in breaking and entering?” she demanded. “For your information, the window was open, we weren’t trying to avoid paying an entry charge—women were allowed in for free. We were jumping the line, that’s all.”

  He blinked, as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I was telling your daughter a funny story,” she said, “just like she asked. You—” she jabbed a finger at his chest “—need an attitude adjustment.”

  He grabbed her hand, his strong fingers wrapped around hers. “Talking about that week is off-limits with my daughter. I know damn well Lissa lied to me, and you did, too.”

  She froze. He thought she’d been talking about that week?

  “That night, the one I just mentioned to Daisy, was when Lissa was in college,” Jane said slowly, to counter the rapid beating of her heart. “Before she got sick. She caught the bus from Fort Collins to Denver and stayed the weekend.”

  “Oh.” He let go of her and ran his hand through his hair, disconcerted. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  His gaze raked her face. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose. “In that case, I’m sorry. I was out of line.”

  An Everson apologizing to a Slater? Until this moment, she’d have said it would never happen.

  “No problem.” Jane realized he was still standing very close to her. For all that she’d accused him of an anger management problem, she hadn’t for one second felt threatened. Still, she sidestepped around him, away from the counter. Suddenly drained, she pulled one of the rush-bottomed dining chairs out from the table and sat.

  “How about we start over?” He opened the fridge and pulled out a Coors. “Want one?”

  “No, thanks.” Then, in case he thought she was rejecting a peace offering, she added, “I’m not a beer drinker.”

  He twisted the cap off his bottle. “There’s no wine, sorry.”

  “I don’t need anything. Thanks.” She relaxed against the back of her chair.

  Kyle pulled out a chair, turned it around and straddled it.

  “So tell me, Jane,” he said, his tone conversational, “what did happen that week?”

  Jane’s heart skipped a beat. “Excuse me?”

  His mouth set in a grim line—so much for the peace offering. “The week Lissa came to stay with you while I was at that conference in San Diego.” As if they didn’t both know exactly which week he meant.

  She played for time. “It was a conference on eco-friendly tourism developments, wasn’t it? Did you ever get to use that stuff?” Her hope that she would get through this visit without giving him the opportunity to ask that question—again—now seemed stupidly naive.

  “What happened?” he repeated.

  The first time he’d asked that question had been six years ago, a few months after that week she’d had with Lissa in Denver. Kyle had phoned Jane out of the blue. He’d said Lissa wasn’t herself—she was secretive, moody—and he thought there was more to it than pregnancy hormones.

  Jane had been a better liar back then. She’d pretended she had no idea what was wrong, insisted nothing had happened. Her loyalty had been to Lissa. Not to Kyle, who’d made his contempt for her plain from the moment they’d met.

  Now, she wanted to say “Nothing,” but the word wouldn’t come out. She sat there, opening and closing her mouth like a stunned goldfish. What few Slater deception skills she’d possessed had apparently rusted over.

  “Silence—that’s progress,” Kyle said grimly. “How about we put an end to this charade and you tell me what really went on?”

  She might struggle to lie, but she didn’t consider telling him the truth, not even for half a second.

  “Lissa and I spent a lot of time talking that week,” she said. “We went out to dinner. No nightclubbing, no parties.”

  His brown eyes searched her face. “You’re lying,” he said, disgusted. Yes, she was lying, if only by omission.

  “Let’s try another question.” He set his beer bottle down on the table so calmly, she knew she should be worried. “Do you think Daisy looks like Lissa?”

  Her stomach lurched. Had he guessed? Or did he somehow know? I should have stayed in Denver. Should never have risked this.

  “I, uh, suppose so.” Jane licked her lips, and saw him catalogue the gesture. And the anxiety that triggered it. She wouldn’t last five minutes under his scrutiny if she acted like a nervous wreck. “She has Lissa’s hair coloring,” she said more firmly.

  “Going by her kindergarten class, most kids have fair hair at this age,” he said.

  “If you say so.” Jane’s childhood had never brimmed with Kodak moments, but in the one school photo she recalled, from around third grade, she’d had fair hair herself. She didn’t remember when it had darkened to its current brown. Maybe around the time she became friends with Lissa.

  “There’s not much Everson in Daisy’s features, is there?” Kyle said.

  “Lots of people don’t look like their family,” she said, feeling her way. “Take my sister, Cat—she’s a redhead, the rest of us are brunette.”

  “Isn’t Cat the one who—” He stopped.

  Jane felt heat in her cheeks. He must have heard, doubtless from his dad, how Jane’s mother used to sleep with men for cash. There’d been gossip, over the years, suggesting maybe Cat wasn’t a Slater, but Jane had never believed it. Her mom’s...activities hadn’t been a regular thing, only when money was particularly tight. Her discreet liaisons would never have come to anyone’s attention, least of all Police Chief Charles Everson’s, if Jane’s father hadn’t decided to boost the earning potential of those trysts by blackmailing a couple of the guys involved.

  “Isn’t Cat the one who what?” Jane forced herself to ask coldly. Maybe, if she pushed, Kyle would back off the conversation altogether.

  He didn’t react. More out of preoccupation than courtesy, it seemed. He sat, deep in thought, his expression not so much suspicious as...bleak. Jane’s heart clenched. Okay, so she didn’t like the guy. But he was the victim of a deception in which she’d played a part.

  She wondered again how much he knew, and how much was a clever guess by that razor-sharp mind of his. She replayed his previous question in her head. There’s not much Everson in Daisy’s features, is there?

  Realization hit, her assumptions shaken up by a kaleidoscope, to settle in a completely different picture.

  “You think Daisy’s not your daughter,” she blurted.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KYLE’S FACE WAS A STUDY in conflict. In denial and longing. “Am I right?” he asked.

&nb
sp; “No!” Jane’s heart thumped so loudly, she wondered how he couldn’t hear it.

  He ran a hand around the back of his neck. “Are you saying you know for sure that Daisy is my daughter?”

  The question sat stark between them.

  “Yes, I am. Kyle...” She would need to tread carefully if she didn’t want to lie to him any more than she had already. It would be even harder face-to-face than it had been on the phone. “Lissa was faithful to you.”

  He pushed himself off his chair, paced toward the oven. “How do you know?”

  “I can’t know for sure,” Jane admitted. “But she never gave any indication she’d even thought about cheating. And, Kyle, Lissa wasn’t perfect, but I don’t believe she’d have done that.” During that long-ago phone call she’d guessed he suspected Lissa of an affair—but it had never occurred to her he might also consider Daisy’s paternity to be in doubt. Had he harbored that suspicion since way back then?

  “I went to the clinic with her, she had the IVF treatment,” Jane said. “I have to assume those were your sperm the lab pulled out of the freezer.” Kyle and Lissa had used fresh sperm on earlier attempts, but they’d also frozen some on Lissa’s insistence, in case something happened to impair Kyle’s fertility.

  “So why did she have a round of treatment without telling me?” he demanded. “When we signed the papers giving each other total control of our frozen ‘assets,’ it was in case one of us died or was incapacitated. Not so one of us could go ahead without the other knowing.”

  He would undoubtedly hate that Jane had heard the wealth of hurt behind his words. Jane thought back to how she’d found him earlier today, in the café, with his father and brother and Daisy. Sure, Charles was a narrow-minded old goat and Gabe was a bit of a mystery. But there was no denying those guys had a powerful bond. Family was a huge deal for them. Unlike for her.

  What Jane knew would change everything for Kyle.

  “Maybe...” She hesitated, aware her next words were crucial. “Maybe Lissa didn’t tell you because you’d said you didn’t want to try again.” Lissa hadn’t told Jane until afterward that Kyle didn’t know about her plan. She’d said they’d had the appointment booked for weeks, then Kyle had been called away on business. Lissa didn’t want to miss the appointment, since she’d been taking the drugs to prepare her uterus for the implanting of the embryos....

  Jane closed her eyes briefly. Daisy’s conception was only the start of a long list of wrongs on Lissa’s part. “Kyle, what’s done is done. How about you focus on the fact that Daisy was the result, and she is your daughter.”

  He searched her face as he drummed his fingers on the table. Then, with some effort, he said, “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Can I have that in writing?” she asked lightly, steering away from the potential quagmire where further questioning might lead. “I don’t think anyone in this town has spoken those words to me before.”

  He rolled his eyes, but not in a hostile way, and she had the distinct sense of having dodged a bullet. She reached across for Kyle’s beer and took a swig.

  “I thought you don’t drink beer.” But his protest was mild, as if, like her, relief had the upper hand.

  When she set the bottle down, Kyle took a drink himself. He nursed the bottle in his hands, staring at the label.

  “The thing is,” he said slowly, “there was always a chance that Lissa’s ability to conceive naturally would come back. The negative effects that chemo have on fertility can wear off.”

  Ugh, she’d hoped they were done with this. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Lissa wasn’t willing to wait a few years to see if that happened,” he said. “And since IVF with frozen eggs was a long shot back then, she wanted us to start sooner rather than later.” He raked a hand through his dark hair, leaving it spikier than Jane would have thought hair that short could be. “If Lissa had slept with someone else before that week...maybe she was already pregnant with someone else’s baby, so she faked going for fertility treatment to pass Daisy off as mine.”

  Which begged the question as to why the baby couldn’t have been his if it had been conceived earlier...but Jane wasn’t about to inquire into the state of his and Lissa’s sex life. “I took Lissa to the fertility clinic myself,” she reminded him.

  Her adamancy shut him up, but she suspected a man as smart as he was would soon start thinking in other directions. She needed to close down this discussion. Now.

  She mustered every ounce of hard-won credibility. “Kyle, I swear, unless someone made a labeling error on a test tube, Daisy is your daughter.”

  He held her gaze with those dark eyes. Somehow, she managed not to look away. Behind him, through the window, the silhouette of one of the pinyon trees that gave the town its name was barely visible in the moments before dusk turned to darkness.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t last another second, Kyle nodded. He tipped the beer up and drained the last of the bottle.

  “Thank you, Jane,” he said, sounding almost formal. “You put my mind at rest, and I appreciate it. Maybe we can bury the hatchet for the next couple of weeks—get this right for Daisy.” Unexpectedly, one side of his mouth quirked. He sounded as if the overture were genuine. He sounded...hopeful.

  Jane made an indistinct sound that may or may not have been a commitment to hatchet-burying. If Kyle knew the truth, he’d be back to despising her in a nanosecond.

  Better to keep her distance, where no one’s hatchet could cause any trouble. It was better for Kyle, better for Daisy, better for everyone, that Jane’s secret should remain a secret.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, SUNDAY, Kyle took advantage of Jane’s presence to head over to the new house and get some work done while Jane looked after Daisy.

  He skipped church, which his father called to query in the afternoon. “There’s an election coming up, you know, and folk like to see the mayor in church.”

  As if Kyle wasn’t aware he was facing a serious challenge at the ballot box. He probably should have gone to church, on several counts, but the house was so close to being finished, a solid twelve-hour stint would make a big difference.

  A local construction firm had built the place, but he’d chosen to do the finishing himself. Partly for cost reasons—like most building projects, it had blown its budget long ago, and Kyle earned a lot less as mayor than he had in his landscape architecture practice. The other reason was that his dad often reminisced about the satisfaction he’d derived from doing the finishing on their family home. Kyle had thought it would be a nice memory to share with Daisy in years to come. Not that she showed much interest in the place right now.

  Today, the work gave him more pleasure than usual. Maybe due to the lightness in his heart that he hadn’t realized had been lacking. Everything felt easier, simpler.

  He had Jane to thank for that.

  He’d never trusted her before, but when she’d told him last night that Daisy was his daughter, he’d known at his very core that she was telling the truth.

  He could have ordered a DNA test at any time these last few years to attain that surety, but he’d decided long ago not to go down that route. Though the suspicion of infidelity had continued to niggle, he’d thought he was handling it. He hadn’t realized what a burden the doubt had been until Jane took it away.

  Not that everything was crystal clear. He trusted his instincts enough to know there was something fishy about Lissa’s “vacation”
in Denver with Jane. But the big question of whether he was Daisy’s father had been answered. He could let the rest go.

  Including his longtime suspicion of Jane. He would make a fresh start with her, for Daisy’s sake. He stopped to buy a bottle of wine at the grocery store on his way home at nearly nine that night with the thought they would chat over a drink.

  But when he arrived at the cottage, Daisy was sound asleep, as expected, and Jane was in her room, with the door closed. Not as expected. He paused outside her door, eyeing the strip of light seeping beneath it. He probably shouldn’t disturb her—he, of all people, knew how tiring a day of Daisy’s near-silence could be.

  They could have their fresh start tomorrow.

  * * *

  BUT ON MONDAY MORNING, they didn’t get a chance to talk before Daisy woke up and the scramble to get ready for kindergarten started. Jane seemed pensive as she helped Daisy assemble cereal and milk, then ate toast with peanut butter at the kitchen counter for her own breakfast.

  At quarter to eight, Kyle drove them all to Pinyon Ridge Elementary School. Mornings were busy on the roads, as the tourists got started on their hiking and sightseeing. It took a good three minutes to drive down Main Street. Three silent minutes—Jane was still munching on the last of her toast, and Daisy was her usual quiet self.

  When they reached the school, Daisy had her door open almost before Kyle stopped the car. Did that mean she was desperate to get away from him, or merely that she wanted to resume a normal routine, having been off kindergarten all last week? He held off on scolding his daughter over the premature door opening.

  “I’ll introduce you to the teacher,” he told Jane. “That way you’ll have no trouble picking Daisy up at the end of the day.”

  They walked inside, Daisy between him and Jane. Jane drew several glances. At first, Kyle assumed it was the usual small-town curiosity. Then he noticed the dads were looking a lot harder than the moms. He checked Jane out with a sidelong glance. She looked bright and fresh in her cherry-pink sundress with a white sweater slung over her shoulders. Definitely worth a second glance. Maybe even a third.