Moonlight, Motorcycles, and Bad Boys

by Lynnette Austin

  She and the Wellners could deal with the situation. She and Reiner could deal with their issues later. For this moment in time, she’d enjoy Danny.

  Scampering down the stairs, she hummed an upbeat melody. The sun shone through the windows as she dug through her fridge for an appropriate snack.

  Head in the crisper, she suddenly knew she was being watched. Oblivious, Chia wrapped himself around her legs, hoping for something, anything to eat.

  “I’m all cleaned up.”

  Butt-end first. Great way to present herself to her son.

  Crouched, she turned to stare into those eyes so identical to her own. Both she and Danny blinked.

  He giggled. “I always wondered how come I had green eyes.”

  When Katie Sara heard the car pull up out front, her hands grew sweaty. She’d only met the Wellners once, twelve years ago. At the time, they’d been introduced to her as Barbara and Bryce, she to them as Katie Sara. No last names were exchanged.

  Her mother had a snit fit over it, but because Katie Sara had turned eighteen before the baby’d been born she no longer needed her mother’s permission. Since it had been a private adoption, she’d been able to meet the prospective parents.

  Because they’d wanted the baby so badly, the Wellners had agreed. On Katie Sara’s part, she’d agreed never to contact her son. She did give permission, however, for him to find her when he was of-age if he wanted.

  Apparently, he’d wanted to—and hadn’t wanted to wait.

  Danny answered the door. He threw himself into his mom’s arms, gave her a hug and a kiss, then turned to hug his dad.

  Katie Sara’s own eyes misted as she watched their tears of happiness.

  “Okay, son, get your backpack. We’re going home.” Danny’s father stood with only one foot inside the house.

  “But don’t you want to meet Katie Sara?” Danny asked.

  “We’ve already met.” Mr. Wellner’s voice was brusque.

  “Bryce, we discussed this on the way here.” Barbara Wellner stepped around her husband and extended her hand. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  Katie Sara took it in her own. “Yes, it is. I want to thank you. For everything.”

  “I think we’re the ones who should be doing the thanking,” Barbara said. “Bryce, come in and close the door.”

  Turning back to Katie Sara, she asked, “May we sit down?”

  “Yes, of course. You had a long trip. Would you like something to drink? Some coffee? Iced tea?”

  “Iced tea would be great.” Barbara looked at her husband. “For both of us.”

  “Why don’t you come back to the family room? I think we’ll be more comfortable there.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Bryce.”

  Danny curled up in a rocker, Chia on his lap, purring at top volume, as the adults arranged themselves around the room. He explained to his parents how he’d found the letter his real mom had written, and how he and Tommy had tracked Katie Sara to Paradox and Wedgewood Way.

  Barbara smiled. “The letter. I wrote that so long ago. Danny’s made our life so much richer, more complete. I can’t imagine it without him.”

  Thoughtfully, she sipped her tea. “We’ve always been right up-front with him about the fact that he was adopted. That we chose him. Obviously, this is something he needed to do. I love him, and I know he loves me. If he feels a need to know you, then we shouldn’t stop it.”

  She turned toward her husband and reached for his hand. He nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry I was such a bear when we got here. I was so worried. So—”

  “I don’t blame you,” Katie Sara said. “You had every right to be. You had to have been half out of your mind.”

  They chatted some more, shared stories about Danny, with him chiming in to embellish or disavow, depending on the situation.

  Katie Sara couldn’t have been happier. Danny’s adopted family was everything she had hoped for when she’d signed the papers. Right then and there, she thanked both God for the gift her child had been given and the two wonderful people who had taken her son into their home and made him their own.

  Danny’s parents stared at each other in that special form of non-verbal communication married people seem so good at.

  “We’ve decided to stay overnight in Paradox,” Bryce said. “It’s late to start back now, and we noticed a motel on the outskirts of town.”

  “The Hilltop,” Katie Sara said.

  He nodded. “Barbara and I are going to go have dinner. Danny, you can come with us, or you can stay here for another hour or so with Katie Sara. Either way is fine with us.”

  “You sure?” Danny looked from his mother to his father and received nods from both. “Then I’d like to stay here.”

  Katie Sara’s heart sang too loudly for her to dwell on the hint of regret that flitted across Mr. Wellner’s face. But before she could take them up on this wonderful offer, she had one more confession to make. One more favor to ask.

  “Danny, I wonder if you’d feed Chia? His bowl is by the sink. The food’s in the pantry. He probably needs fresh water, too.”

  “Cool.” The two were off in a flash.

  Danny might not have recognized the ploy, but the Wellners did.

  “What’s up?” Bryce asked, the moment Danny was out of earshot.

  Katie Sara fidgeted, knitting and unknitting her fingers. “I have to tell you something. Something I should have told you twelve years ago.”

  She saw fear on their faces and held up a hand. “Wait. Please. I lied about Danny’s dad. When I said I didn’t know who his father was.” Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips. “I lied because I didn’t tell him. I want you to know Danny was conceived in love, that it wasn’t some tawdry backseat thing.”

  “After we met you, we were almost certain that was the case,” Bryce said.

  Katie Sara’s gaze flew to his. “Thank you.” She played with her fingers some more. “The thing is, Danny’s father is in Paradox now.” She blew out her breath. “Should he meet him?”

  “Have you told him yet he has a son?” Bryce asked.

  She shook her head.

  “And you’d be willing to do that?” he asked.

  “Yes. I think if meeting me meant so much to Danny, he’ll always wonder about his dad.”

  Barbara and Bryce, holding hands, looked at each other, then both nodded. “I think you’re right,” Barbara said. “He’d still have a puzzle piece missing.”

  “What’s his father’s name?” Bryce asked.

  “Reiner Broderick.”

  Bryce’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “The quarterback?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Boy, you’re in a rotten mood,” Felicity muttered.

  “Yeah, well, I’m allowed to be!” Reiner groused. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  “I did! This morning on the way to school, I specifically said I needed some lingerie. But you were cranky then, too. Guess I can run around without underpants or go fishing in the swimming pool. Who knows what I might find.”

  He shot her a venomous look. “I'm goin’ to work on my book.”

  “I need clothes.”

  “Well, we can get them tomorrow! Nothin’s open now.”

  “Because you waited too long.”

  “Stick that lip out any farther—”

  “Yah, yah, yah.” She made a face and slithered off to her bedroom.

  He smacked his forehead against the refrigerator. Somewhere back in his gray matter, he vaguely remembered the conversation with Felicity this morning, but he’d been in no condition to listen when he’d picked her up for school.

  Blowing out a breath, he resigned himself to the fact that, lately, he was a complete and utter failure at everything. He hadn’t even fed Felicity tonight.

  He glanced toward the office where his manuscript waited. His overdue manuscript. The heck with it! He grabbed his car keys.

  Twenty minutes later, he bra
ked in front of his garage, armed with a four-topping pizza and a video the acne-faced clerk promised a thirteen-year-old girl would love. Time to repair what he could. They’d eat, watch a movie, and he’d write after she went to bed.

  He reached the top step, and the door flew open. Felicity threw her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry, Uncle Reiner. I acted like a poop.”

  He kissed the top of her head and handed her the pizza. “No, baby doll, I had a lot on my mind. I was the poop.”

  She grinned. “Okay!”

  Laughing, he tugged a strand of purple hair. “You’re bad.”

  “What video did you get?”

  Before he could answer, she said, “Why don’t we take this over to Ms. McMichaels? Share.”

  “No way!”

  “Uncle Reiner, you two are worse than kids. You had a fight, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Did to.”

  “We had a difference of opinion. I’m reasonable, and she’s insane.” He shrugged.

  “Yep. A fight.” She took the pizza from him. “Let’s go. You can kiss and make up.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Yeah, right. That’s why you’ve been so ugly all day.”

  He stood in the doorway and watched as she walked to his car and got in, waving for him to hurry up.

  Fudge!

  Danny’d just finished telling Katie Sara about how he and his best buddy Tommy hoped to be on the same football team in the fall when the doorbell rang. She glanced at the clock. Too soon for his parents to be here, unless they’d changed their minds and decided to come for him early, and too late for most people to visit.

  Her heart thumped erratically in her chest. Only one person in Paradox made a habit of coming to her door late at night.

  “You okay?” Danny asked.

  “Absolutely.” She grinned at him. “Be back in a jiffy.” As she walked to the door, she caught a flash of red parked out front and knew she hadn’t caught a break. Panic set in. She couldn’t open the door, couldn’t let him walk in on Danny. Not like this. Both father and son deserved better.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Katie Sara?” Danny called.

  “Yeah. I’m getting it.” Shoot, her hand shook as she opened the door a crack. “Reiner, I’m busy. Go away.”

  He didn’t look happy to be standing on her doorstep. “That’s what I told her, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  Then she saw Felicity.

  “Hi, Katie Sara.”

  She swung the door open but caught Reiner’s arm. “I need to talk to you. Now. Outside. Felicity, why don’t you sit down in the living room for a minute, and—”

  Too late.

  Felicity, galumphing ahead of Reiner, had already headed into the kitchen. She stopped, reversed, then peeked around the door again. “Holy Toledo!”

  Holy Toledo was right, Katie Sara thought. She couldn’t have said it better.

  Felicity looked from Katie Sara to Reiner and back to Katie Sara. “Whoa, I guess this is one of those complications you taught us about in class, huh?”

  Reiner frowned at Katie Sara, then started toward the kitchen.

  “No!” She grabbed his arm. “Talk to me first!”

  Two steps into the room, he came to a dead stop, then went white as a sheet.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered. Her eyes teared up and shot to his.

  There she met ice-cold fury.

  “Reiner—” Her hand went to her throat as his eyes devoured the boy from where they stood in the hallway.

  A quiet curse ripped the air as his face turned to granite. Thankfully, Danny’d turned on the TV and hadn’t heard them.

  Katie Sara felt everything inside her die. Her fault. Totally.

  “Felicity.” His voice was steel. “Go into the kitchen with the pizza. Don’t say a word about me. You hear?”

  “Do I ever!”

  Keeping his back to Katie Sara, he stepped further away from the kitchen.

  They heard Felicity introduce herself to Danny as one of Katie Sara’s students and offer him pizza.

  “Reiner—”

  “Do you have any idea how I’m feelin’ right now?”

  “I can only guess.” Katie Sara walked outside with him following, around back, away from the house to have the talk she’d put off too long. Rhonda had warned her.

  A blow straight to his solar plexus.

  Fury swept through him. As she walked ahead of him, he could barely keep his hands off that sweet little neck of hers. If he so much as touched her, they might have to lock him up. For murder!

  Felicity thought he’d been in a rotten mood before. Hah! Tip of the iceberg!

  To think that a few weeks ago, he’d left Hilton Head figuring he’d be bored senseless inside of twenty-four hours. What a joke. His life had been turned inside-out and upside-down.

  “Reiner, I know what you’re thinking, but if you’ll—”

  Rage gushed from every pore. “You have no idea what I’m thinkin’, so don’t feed me that. Believe me, I don’t need it. Not now. And especially not from you, of all people!” He practically spit out the words. “Always so above and beyond the rest of us.”

  She collapsed onto her old swing, her knees pulled up to her chest, forehead resting on them. He leaned against a tree and crossed his arms.

  “For the first couple years, I stared at every baby, every toddler wondering if he was ours.” She drew a shaky breath. “One day, a young mother with a little boy actually asked to be moved to a different table at a restaurant, and I realized how obsessive I’d become.”

  She swiped at her eyes. “I tucked the memory away kind of like a mother does with the outfit her baby wears home from the hospital. To be taken out once in a while and stroked longingly, reaching for a past she can’t reclaim.”

  In the soft evening light, Katie Sara turned her tear-streaked face to his. “What mother hasn’t longed to hold her child as he’d once been, an infant safe in her arms? Innocent of all the world’s injustices, unhurt by life.”

  A sob tore from her. “I never got to experience that with our son, but he’s always been with me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was rough.

  She buried her face in her hands.

  “Katie Sara, look at me.” He yanked her hands away from her face. “Didn’t you think I had the right to know?”

  She opened her mouth to blame her mother, then closed it again. She couldn’t. The blame was hers. She stared out into her yard at the sweet-smelling flowers, at the large shade trees that threw shadows over the lawn.

  An early firefly sparked. Magic, she’d always thought when she’d seen one. But tonight didn’t feel magical.

  Then she laughed.

  Reiner growled.

  “I’m sorry.” She rubbed her forehead. “I was thinking about fireflies.”

  “You’ve gone crazy.”

  “No. Actually, I’ve never felt saner. I’ve always believed fireflies were magic, and now they’ve brought my son to me.”

  “Our son.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Brought our son to us.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. Our son.”

  “I’m not surprised you didn’t remember that. Obviously, you never did figure I had any right to him, and I seriously doubt a firefly brought him.”

  “No. A bus did. An eleven-year-old kid on a bus by himself.”

  His whole body ached—with the need to rage, with a desperation to understand, with a desire to know and be part of his son’s life. Despair overwhelmed him. This drove the final nail in the coffin of his doomed relationship with Katie Sara.

  The path had been strewn with hurdles, but he thought he’d done a pretty commendable job of clearing them. True, there hadn’t been a lot of air between himself and some of those barriers, but with enough persistence, he’d eventually made it over every one.

  This, though? He really didn’t see how he could leap over this. Worse. He wasn’t sure
he wanted to.

  Maybe Katie Sara had been right. Maybe they needed to get on with getting on.

  Then she patted the swing beside her. “Sit down, Reiner. Please. I owe you an apology. Don’t make me break my neck staring up at you.”

  He dropped down, instantly sorry as her perfume wrapped itself around him. Scooting away from her, he ignored her wounded eyes.

  “I don’t expect you to forgive me, Reiner, but I’m sorrier than I can ever say. You must hate me.”

  It was as if somebody had crawled inside his body and drawn a chalk line down the center. Half of him ached for Katie Sara, for what she’d gone through, was going through now. The other half despised her for crawling off like a goddamn thief and stealing both his heart and his baby without a word.

  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had taken up residence inside his head. Inside his heart. Inside his body.

  He stared at this woman who sat beside him, this woman he had loved. Still loved? He honestly didn’t know.

  When they went back inside, Katie Sara said, “Danny, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  Reiner didn’t miss the hitch in her voice or the light in Danny’s eyes.

  The boy swallowed. “You’re Reiner Broderick, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat and looked into a face that was the mirror image of his own at that age.

  “Me and my dad used to watch you play football every week.” The kid’s face lit up. “You were awesome!”

  The smile slid. “Too bad ’bout your shoulder.”

  “Yeah, things happen.”

  Felicity had gone upstairs to the restroom, so Katie Sara drew a deep breath and jumped in. The time would never be better.

  “Danny, there’s something else you need to know. I already spoke with your mom and dad, and they’ve given me permission to share this with you.” She looked at Reiner, who stared at her through hooded lids, his expression giving away nothing. “Danny, Reiner’s your birth father.”

  “Oh, boy.” Felicity dropped onto the floor just inside the room.