She clutched the paper tightly. “Why?”
“So I don’t have to take the time to read them myself.” Sitting, he located the hardware bag and sorted through the myriad screws, nuts and bolts, putting them in some sort of order. That done, he looked at her. “What’s first?”
His tone might be mild, even amused, she acknowledged, but his expression was determined. It would be easier to let him do this — to fulfill some displaced sense of responsibility — than to make him believe that she really didn’t want his help. Accepting that, she folded the directions to the place where she’d quit—Step 2 — and read out loud. “Align holes in middle and bottom rails of Side A with corresponding holes in End C...”
Nick didn’t really need the directions. The crib was a pretty simple piece—sides, ends and a bottom to support the mattress. He didn’t mind her reading them out loud, though. She had a nice voice—soft and Texan. Sometimes it seemed that, thanks to the oil industry, practically everyone he met in Houston had come there from someplace else, but Faith was very definitely a Lone Star native.
“Can you balance this?” he asked when he moved closer to her to secure the opposite end to the side rail.
She gave the pieces a wary look. Still afraid to get too close? he wondered. But that wasn’t her concern at all, he realized. It was the actual physical process that slowed her. Bending was awkward. Crouching was out of the question, and sitting meant getting clumsily down to the floor and accepting help to get clumsily back to her feet when they were done. Finally, with a rueful glance at the pieces yet to be assembled, she very carefully lowered herself to the carpeted floor, managing without looking clumsy at all.
Nick secured the screws while she steadied the rail, then turned the entire section around so she wouldn’t have to move for the next part. “Where does your family live?” he asked as he leaned across to get the hardware.
For a time he thought she wasn’t going to answer, then, at last, her reply came in a flat tone. “I don’t know.”
He carefully controlled his surprise—and his curiosity. “They don’t live around here?”
“My mother grew up in Fort Worth. I guess her family is still there. I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen her in years.”
“What about your father?”
“I don’t know where he is, either. He took off before I was born.” Her voice took on a dry, faintly sarcastic quality. “Evidently he wasn’t pleased by the prospect of impending fatherhood.”
Nick kept his gaze tightly focused on the screw he was tightening. So history had repeated itself. Like mother, like daughter. She’d probably heard that more than once, with just the right holier-than-thou touch. “I wouldn’t have run off,” he said evenly, “if you had bothered to tell me.”
There was a moment of utter stillness in which he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Then, her voice stiff and unforgiving, she asked, “And when would have been a good time for me to get in touch with you? When your brother was telling me about your new wife?”
Finally he did look at her. Her mouth was unsmiling, the look in her eyes distant and cold. “I told you, the marriage wasn’t—”
“Wasn’t real,” she finished for him. “Yes, you told me last night. Not six months ago when I needed to know it. Not three months ago when it might have made a difference.”
The screwdriver slipped and scraped a furrow of skin from his thumb. Sitting back on his heels, he scowled at her. “Okay, so you believed I was married. You still should have told me.”
“Yes, it would have been great fun. I could have driven all the way down to Houston, found a way to see you without seeing your wife and said, ‘Hey, remember me? Oh, you don’t?’” Her cool, taunting smile faded, and her expression shifted to match his own. “Has it occurred to you that maybe I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to know? Women do not need men to have babies and raise families. They do it by themselves all the time.”
“Not women like you,” he said softly. “Not if you have a choice.”
Letting go of the rail now that one screw supported it, she scooted back a few inches to lean against the chaise. Her measuring, calculating gaze never left his face. “Women like me,” she repeated. “What does that mean?”
“Tell me you wouldn’t have preferred to do this the traditional way—to have a husband at least nine months before you have a baby. Convince me that you wouldn’t have done anything in your power to keep this baby from being subjected to the same sort of gossip that you grew up with. Make me believe that, being illegitimate yourself, you don’t have the slightest qualm about bringing your own illegitimate child into this town.”
Once again she became frozen, then, abruptly, she laughed, a harsh, humorless sound. “You’ve been in town—what, twenty-four hours?—and you’ve already picked up all the gossip. Is that why you were asking about my family?”
“I was curious.”
“Why?”
“It’s normal, I believe, to want to know something about the mother of your child.” He matched her earlier sarcasm degree for degree.
“It’s normal to know the mother of your child before you create that child,” she scoffed. “Besides, I never said you were her father. I told you last night—”
“You lied.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then softly challenged, “Prove it.”
He gave it a moment’s thought. He was used to providing proof—district attorneys asked for it all the time. All he had now, though, was circumstantial. Coincidence. Possibilities. Suspicions. He was in the same position he’d often found himself in in the past. He knew the truth. He just couldn’t prove it. “The room next door has an iron bed in it. It’s a double. The rails get really cold in the winter.” Briefly he wondered about that last part. He didn’t remember touching the rails that morning when he’d gotten dressed and slipped out. He had been so intent on leaving quietly, on not drawing anyone’s attention, especially on not facing a scene that could only be uncomfortable once it became apparent that he only vaguely remembered the party and nothing about what had happened afterward.
After a moment he went on. ‘There’s a little lamp—glass, heavy. I knocked it over when I was leaving that morning. And curtains that let in a lot of light.” Thanks to them, he hadn’t found it necessary to turn on the lamp he’d knocked over. There had been enough light filtering through the windows to allow him to dress and find his way out. If he had turned on the lamp, what would he have seen besides a rumpled bed? Further details, of course—the color of the sheets, the walls, whether the lamp shade was ruffled, pleated or plain. He wouldn’t have seen Faith, though. One other memory he recalled was the sense of having been alone for some time.
She looked away, her gaze focusing on the chimes that hung above an empty space where, Nick assumed, the crib would go. The thin glass shapes—starfish, sea horses and sand dollars — stirred gently, but not enough to collide, not enough to make music. He shifted his gaze back to her face only an instant before she looked once more at him. “All that proves is that you’ve been in my guest room.”
“I spent the night in your guest room almost exactly nine months prior to the date your baby is due. There’s no other possible candidate around—”
“Who told you that?”
He started to answer, then closed his mouth. Was he reluctant to answer because he didn’t want her to know that he’d been asking about her? Or was it that he didn’t want her to know that his family had been gossiping about her?
In spite of his silence, she guessed where the information had come from. It showed in the sudden weariness that shadowed her eyes, in the slight droop to the set of her mouth. She probably liked his family, and they—at least, his mother, Anna and Lucia—professed to like her, but they still found it easy enough to talk about her, to discuss, judge or defend her choices. How much easier was it for people who weren’t particularly fond of her? How much harder did their talk make the situation for
her? How much of the blame for that was his?
He hadn’t known, he reminded himself. If she’d told him, they could have done something sooner, could have put a stop to all but the worst of the gossips. At least, he would like to think so. But if she’d told him in the beginning, back at the time that he was pretending to be married to Phoebe, there was little he could have done for her. The case had taken much of his time, most of his energy and all of his attention. He couldn’t have married her, not when he was already “married.” He couldn’t have given her the time necessary to work out some sort of solution. Hell, last spring he couldn’t even have spared a thought for her and her baby. If she had told him then, he would have denied it, would have turned his back on her and convinced himself that it wasn’t true. Or he would have brooded over it to the point of distraction, screwing up months of intensive undercover work and putting his own life and Phoebe’s in danger.
But the case was over—except for the upcoming trial—the sham marriage was dissolved, and he had all the time he needed to work things out.
Choosing a handful of hardware, he fastened the last screw to the side rail, then reached for the remaining rail. Faith automatically leaned forward to brace it while he fastened the screws at the opposite end, then scooted aside when he moved to the end nearest her. Once that was finished, he stopped working again and fixed his attention on her. He didn’t move a safe distance away, but remained where he was, close enough to touch her. “Why are you trying to convince me that I’m not the father?”
Rubbing at a worn place on the knee of her faded jeans, she answered without looking at him. “Why are you so willing to believe that you are?”
Hazy memories. Erotic visions. A certainty that came from places unknown. “Call it instinct.”
Then she did look at him, scowling. The fierceness of her expression made her eyes bluer, her mouth poutier, her cheeks brighter. “Most men would need convincing. Most men would demand blood tests, and even when they had the proof, they would say it wasn’t their problem. Even with proof, they would require court orders before they offered any financial support and acts of God before they gave any emotional support.”
“Are you an expert on most men?”
The flush coloring her face heightened, making him wonder just how much experience she did have. Not enough to make her come looking for justice—damn the wife she’d believed he had or anything else that got in her way. Not enough to allow her to lie believably, to control those hot flushes and unsteady gazes when she offered untruths. Certainly not enough for her to be taking birth control pills nine months ago or to have her own stash of condoms, like most of the single women he knew.
If she’d been the kind of woman who indulged in affairs, the people in town wouldn’t have been so shocked by her pregnancy and her decision to go through with it. She wouldn’t be so vulnerable to their talk. She wouldn’t have fainted when he’d walked into the shop yesterday. If she were an easy sort of woman, most likely she would have been at least vaguely amused by his earlier reference to a virgin birth.
But she wasn’t that sort of woman, and maybe his remark had hit too close to home.
She’d hardly ever dated, Anna had said, and she had never been serious about any man. She had never left town, so it couldn’t have been a romance elsewhere. No man in town was looking guilty, stepping forward to accept responsibility or hanging his head in shame. She was probably as innocent as she looked... and she looked more innocent than any other woman he’d ever met.
God help him, what had he done?
His hands trembled just a little as he reached for the bottom that would connect to the four sides of the crib frame and support the mattress. “I’m a good cop,” he said, his voice even. “I have good instincts. I get this feeling when someone’s lying to me, and I’ve had it practically from the moment I saw you yesterday. So—” He drew a deep breath, but it didn’t fill his lungs and it didn’t quiet the uneasiness inside him. It didn’t prepare him for the question he was about to ask, but he asked it anyway. “What are we going to do about Amelia Rose?”
Chapter 3
The question hung in the air between them, an annoyance, a patience-draining frustration. Faith held on to her temper, though. She always did. Losing control, according to Great-aunt Lydia, was to be avoided at all costs. When a woman lost control, she was vulnerable to outside forces. It was an open invitation to sin, sorrow and heartache. Faith was walking proof of that. If she had remained in control that February night when Nick had first touched her, she never would have let him kiss her. She never would have let him undress her, carry her to the bed and, oh, so sweetly seduce her. She never would have allowed passion—and desire, need and a lifetime’s hunger for love—sweep her away, and she never would have found herself in the situation she was now in.
But, she acknowledged with a little nudge from Amelia Rose, losing control that night was the single best thing that had ever happened to her. No matter how sordid it sounded — and she could think of little that sounded worse than a few hours’ fling with a drunken stranger who would remember nothing of his passion the next morning—it was still the best, sweetest, most important night of her life. It had given her a child, and that was worth all the disillusionment, all the gossip, all the relinquished dreams.
Now that child had brought the source of those dreams back into her life. He was kneeling only a few feet away, asking questions that she didn’t want answered, heading in directions that she couldn’t bear to go.
What are we going to do? he wanted to know, and she had only one answer. She was just afraid that it was an answer he couldn’t accept. “We aren’t going to do anything,” she said quietly. “I am going to have my baby, take care of her, love her and be the only family she’ll ever need. You can go back to Houston and forget that we exist. We’re not your responsibility. You don’t owe her or me anything. She won’t need your money or your time or your attention. I’ve got plenty of all that to give her.”
“You can’t be a father to her.” His voice was just as quiet, just as determined, as hers had been. “You can’t replace her grandparents, aunts and uncles. You’re her mother. You can take care of her and love her, but you can’t be her family. You can’t give her—” he faltered, only slightly but enough for her to notice “— what I can.”
She knew he was right. It was one of her greatest regrets that all she could offer her sweet little girl was herself when Amelia Rose deserved more. All babies deserved more—a father who welcomed them, grandparents who spoiled them, siblings to play with, stand up for and torment them. They needed aunts and uncles at the Thanksgiving table and cousins by the score around the Christmas tree. Amelia Rose deserved all of that, but she would have to make the best of what fate had given her. “I can give her enough.”
“Was it enough for you—living alone with your mother? Never knowing your father?” He asked the questions as if he already knew the answers. Probably he did. He’d grown up in the largest, loudest, most loving family in all of New Hope. No matter what else, family came first with the Russos. While Nick didn’t seem to feel the connection as intensely as the others—he had, after all, moved half a state away—he still felt it. That was why he’d driven nearly three hundred miles at the end of a long week when he’d been working damned hard and sleeping too little, just so he could attend his brother’s engagement party. That was why he was in town now, for the holiday and Michael’s wedding.
That was why he was here now.
“For the record, I didn’t live with my mother.” Her upbringing wasn’t a topic Faith would choose to discuss with Nick, but she suspected it would distract him—momentarily, at least — from the more important subject of Amelia Rose.
She was right. “Then who did you live with?” he asked, his look a little puzzled.
“Lydia Harper was my mother’s aunt. She was fifty-seven years old when I came to live here.”
“How old were you?”
She ex
haled softly. “Three and a half weeks.” This was the only home she’d ever known, Lydia the closest thing to a mother she’d ever had — even though the old lady had never let her forget the sinner who was her mother. Her reminders had been so frequent that they had seemed part of her daily admonitions: stand up straight, be good, don’t get your clothes dirty, eat all your vegetables, brush your teeth, say your prayers, and don’t turn into a harlot like your mother. Harlot had been Lydia’s sacond-favorite way of referring to Sally Harper; her favorite had simply been that girl, offered in a judgmental tone that suggested she found Sally’s name too abhorrent to cross her lips.
For all her reliance on the Bible and all her proclamations of being a good Christian woman, Lydia had never been strong on forgiveness.
“Why did your mother bring you here?”
She sighed again, a soft puff of air that eased none of the tension inside her. “I imagine she was no more eager to be a mother than her former boyfriend was to be a father.” But that wasn’t true. On her rare visits, Sally had assured her of that. She’d been sixteen and trying to make it on her own with no one to turn to for help except her aunt, whose sense of Christian duty demanded that she assist her niece in her time of trouble. Sally had wanted Faith, she promised her. She had always intended to come back, as soon as things got better. As soon as she got a job and a decent place to live. As soon as she got rid of the current boyfriend. As soon as she paid off her bills or got out of some little bit of trouble.
There had been a dozen visits over fifteen years, a dozen farewells with Faith left behind in Lydia’s care, and more than a dozen excuses for it. By the time of Sally’s last visit, Faith had accepted that her mother was never going to rescue her from the strict, sterile environment of Lydia’s guardianship. Even at fifteen, she had accepted that there would be only one escape for her: her great-aunt’s death. Even at eighteen, when she was legally free to leave, she hadn’t. She couldn’t have. Family duty and obligation had been too deeply ingrained in her. Lydia had taken her in and raised her. Faith owed her for it. She had been repaying her right up to the day the old lady had died.
Discovered: Daddy Page 6