He had known, even when she was nothing more than a vision disturbing his nights, that she was pretty. The simple word didn’t do her justice today, but beautiful was too overpowering. She was lovely. Stunning. Breath-stealing.
For a long time he simply stood there at the door and watched her, even though he wanted to join her. He wanted to walk outside, close the door and shut out the rest of the world. He wanted to look at her—which would ensure, he thought without humor, that those damnable, haunting, erotic dreams would never leave him.
Erotic dreams of a very pregnant, shy, innocent woman. How many of the men he knew would think such a thing was even possible? But he was living proof. He’d wanted her even before he’d known she existed, and her pregnancy didn’t change that. Right now, right this moment, no matter how crazy it seemed, no matter how wrong it was, he wanted her—wanted to look at her, talk to her, be with her. He wanted to touch her, to connect physically with her. He wanted her.
At last, oblivious of the celebration going on behind him, he opened the door and stepped outside. His footsteps made little sound on the brick path. She didn’t notice him, though, so when he spoke, he kept his voice quiet, his tone even.
“When Mike was about six or seven, he won a bunch of goldfish at a carnival here. He gave them to me for safekeeping, but I had other things on my mind.” He smiled briefly as he remembered what he’d found so distracting that day — namely, Mary Kate Thomas, who had recently returned to New Hope after a year in California. She had left all legs and pigtails, gawky, plain and shy, and had returned developed, with a capital double D. What a difference a year had made. “I put the fish in the fountain here and went off looking for my own amusement. When it was time to go, Mike and I came back for the fish, and... Well, the water was untreated, it was only a few inches deep, and it was a hot August day. He cried and put up such a fuss that I finally went to the store and bought him some more. Within a few days, they were dead, too. He hadn’t fed them. He forgot about them.”
She didn’t speak, but she did manage a little smile. She hadn’t smiled for him before, not a real smile, just little mocking gestures or ones so cool they could frost glass. He hadn’t yet received one of those smiles like she’d given the cowboy before the wedding. But she wasn’t with the cowboy, he reminded himself. The heartbreaker on the dance floor clearly belonged to him, and he to her.
He wondered what it felt like to belong to someone.
“You look nice.”
“So do you.” She returned the compliment, then took it away with her next words. “But what man doesn’t look nice in a tuxedo?”
“Oh, come on, you can be honest. It won’t go to my head. I look better than any other man here.”
The little smile grew a bit. “Can we say ‘arrogant’?”
“Not arrogant, darlin’. Confident.”
The casual endearment chased away her smile, and wariness, coupled with weariness, darkened her eyes. How could a simple, meaningless little word cause her such discomfort? he wondered, then irritably answered his own question. Because it was meaningless. It could have just as easily been an insult or a who-gives-a-damn. People in their circumstances were supposed to use words like that and mean them.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked, forcing his voice into a friendly tone, trying to regain the connection they had so quickly lost.
She moved from the fountain to sit on the nearest iron bench. “It was loud inside.”
“Yeah, we Russos are a noisy bunch. At least here we have room to spread out. You should see us all at Mom and Pop’s house. I’ve seen the walls vibrate from the noise level. When I was a kid, my grandma Rosa—”
She interrupted. “Your grandmother’s name is Rosa?”
Slowly he smiled. He hadn’t noticed the coincidence before because he hadn’t thought of that particular relative in years. “My great-grandmother. Rosa Marguerita DeGennaro Russo. She died when I was about nine. Hers was the first funeral I’d ever been to, and it put the fear of God into me. For the next year I was the best behaved kid Sacred Heart had ever seen.”
“You Russos were always well-behaved kids. Your parents saw to that.”
He shrugged. “Within limits. We all managed to get into trouble from time to time.” He was still managing. But damned if he wasn’t going to find a way to make the best of this latest problem.
“You were going to say something about your great-grandmother when you got distracted.”
“Yeah, you’ve been distracting me a lot lately.” He circled the fountain and sat down at the opposite end of the bench. Even though she immediately scooted away, it left only about four inches between them. “I’m sure that night last February you distracted me from every common sense lesson my mother, my father and my priest drilled into me.”
“I did not!”
“Maybe not deliberately, but the result was the same. You were the first time—the only time—that I trusted in fate.”
“That’s your fault, not mine,” she declared. “You were drunk.”
The teasing forgotten, he faced her. “Didn’t you know that?”
Color crept into her face as she stared pointedly away. “I knew you’d had a few drinks. I could taste—could smell it. But you didn’t act...”
Taste. She had kissed him—or more likely, he had kissed her. He wished be could remember it, wished he could remember what she had tasted like. He wished he could remember how she had felt, how she had looked, whether he had satisfied her. There was no doubt in his mind that he had been satisfied. Hell, dreams from that forgotten night had brought him damned close to satisfaction countless times since.
“Why did you let me touch you?” he asked quietly. “Considering who you were, who I was, why the hell did you let me near? You knew my life was in Houston. You knew there could be consequences. Why didn’t you send me away and lock yourself up tight in that house the way you’ve been doing all your life?”
She turned her head away from him. It was a sad day when she would rather have this conversation facing the glass doors and all the nosy people inside than look at him. “Maybe I did it because that was how I’d lived my whole life. Maybe I wanted to take a chance. Maybe, just once, I wanted to be like everyone else.” Finally she glanced back at him. “Why doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I did it—and, yes, I knew there could be consequences, and I’m dealing with them.”
“No, Faith, we’re dealing with them.”
She shook her head. “I was the only one who went into this with both eyes open. You were too drunk to make a rational choice, too drunk to remember, once it was over, what we’d done. That excuses you from responsibility. It allows you to go home and pretend this never happened.”
Go home and pretend that he hadn’t royally disrupted her life, that he hadn’t left her vulnerable to mean-spirited gossip and narrow minds. Go home and forget that he had seduced a woman who had likely expected—and definitely deserved—much more than she’d gotten. Go home, absolved of responsibility, free of guilt, and never know about his daughter. Never wonder if she had his eyes or her mother’s smile. Never question if everything was all right in her life, if people were blaming her for her father’s sin, if she missed having a father, a family, like the other kids. Go home and never see either of them again, never think about them, never care about them.
She thought he was capable of doing that, but he didn’t believe he was. “I can’t lie to myself like that, Faith. I know you think it would be for the best —”
“It would be best. You don’t want to be a father. You’ve never wanted that. I want to be a mother. I had options. I could have told you no. I could have had an abortion. I could have given Amelia Rose up for adoption. But I chose to have her and keep her. You can’t be held responsible for the results of my decisions.”
Uncomfortable because some part of him wanted to be convinced by her argument, Nick scowled. “Under the law, I am responsible. You didn’t get pregnant on your own
. I was there for the fun part, even if I can’t remember it. That means I have an obligation for the rest of it.”
She shook her head sadly. “The rest of it is the fun part—raising her, being with her, loving her. But you don’t see it that way. You see duties, responsibilities and obligations. I was raised by a woman who never wanted children, who looked at me and saw only duties and responsibilities. It’s a tough way to live, Nick. It’s a terrible. burden to put on a little girl. I meant what I said the first night. No father at all is better than a reluctant father. I can’t expose Amelia Rose to that. I won’t.”
Feeling frustrated and helpless, he ran his hand over his hair. “So what am I supposed to do, Faith?”
She slid to the edge of the bench, then rose carefully to her feet. For a moment she simply stood there, then she gazed down at him and spoke with conviction. “Go home. Get yourself a new supply of condoms, lay off the booze and don’t trust fate again.”
She was half a dozen feet away when he stood up. “I’ll see you again.”
She didn’t respond, didn’t slow, didn’t glance back at him.
“It’s not that easy, Faith.”
Reaching the wrought-iron gate, she released the latch and swung it open.
“Damn it, Faith.” He watched her pass through the gate and out of sight, then shoved his hands into his pockets and swore again.
Maybe she was right. Maybe the lessons his father had taught him were too old-fashioned. Maybe they didn’t fit today’s world, today’s solutions. Maybe it would be best if he did exactly what she wanted—went home and never had any contact with them again. It would definitely be the easy way out. He could keep his job and his condo. He could continue to fill his life with the friends who had become his second family. He could make things normal again—could live as if nothing had changed.
But something had changed. No matter how much he wished it weren’t so, it was. Wednesday morning he had been unattached, accountable only for himself. Now he was a soon-to-be father. Kids made all the difference in the world, his sister Kathryn had once told him. Now he knew how right she was. Planned or unplanned, wanted or regretted, kids made a difference.
Maybe he could buy his way out. He could go back to his life, send a check every payday and try to ease his conscience that way. She insisted that she didn’t need the money, and from what he’d seen, he believed it was true, but it would make him feel better. It would make him feel as if he hadn’t completely abandoned his daughter, and it would probably satisfy Faith.
But would it satisfy Amelia Rose? How was he supposed to balance his obligations to her with Faith’s desire to be left alone? Which was more important: Amelia Rose’s right to have a father, reluctant or not, or Faith’s right to make the major decisions about her daughter’s life herself?
“You look like you could use a drink.”
Nick slowly turned to accept the glass of champagne his father was offering. He took a sip, then cradled the chilled flute in his palm. “It was a great wedding, Pop.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Antonio sighed with satisfaction. “I don’t suppose it stirred up any urges in you.”
“Only one—to run back to Houston just as fast as I can.”
“What is it you find so appealing about that place—other than that it’s not New Hope?”
Nick leaned against the fountain and considered the question. He’d known when he was in college that he wouldn’t be returning home after graduation. He’d wanted to live someplace else, and Houston had won because his roommates were both from there. It was a growing city, vital, diverse, and that diversity extended to law enforcement. The city had a whole lot of everything going on, while police work in New Hope consisted mostly of writing traffic tickets and investigating vandalism complaints. In all the years he’d lived here, he couldn’t remember a single rape or murder and only occasional assaults.
“I don’t know, Pop. It’s where I live. It’s my home.”
Antonio made a disapproving gesture. “No matter how many places you move to, your home will always be here. Your family will always be here.”
In more ways than you ever suspected, Nick thought grimly. He wished he could confide in his father, wished he could ask his advice the way he always had as a kid when something troubled him, But until he had some idea of what he wanted, until he and Faith had reached some sort of agreement on his role in Amelia Rose’s life, he couldn’t tell anyone. It wouldn’t be fair to Faith. It certainly wouldn’t be fair to Antonio to say, “Hey, Pop, guess what? I’m about to become a father, but you can’t see my little girl because her mother and I agreed that there’s no place for me in her life.”
“Listen, Pop...” He shifted uncomfortably. “I’m going to head back to Houston in just a bit.”
“But the family is here,” Antonio protested. “Everyone will be at the house. They’re looking forward to spending some time with you.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. It’s just that there are some things I need to take care of.”
His father offered another halfhearted protest before giving in. They returned to the reception hall, and Nick made the rounds, telling family and friends goodbye. He kissed his new sister-in-law, hugged his brother and enveloped his mother and father in a bear hug before leaving.
The house was unnaturally quiet when he let himself in. Upstairs in his old room, he changed from the tux into jeans and a T-shirt, left the rental hanging on the door for return to the formal wear shop and quickly packed his bag. After a stop at the living room desk, he left and locked up again, then made one last stop before heading south.
Faith was still wearing the pretty green dress, but the hose and shoes were gone. Barefoot and with her hair down, she looked too young to be pregnant, far too young to be so alone.
She didn’t speak when she opened the door. She simply frowned so intensely that it made her eyes look a little damp.
“I’m going back to Houston now,” he said bluntly. “If you want to get in touch with me... if you need to—” Breaking off, he held out the paper he’d taken from his father’s desk. On it he had scrawled his home and work numbers, followed by his cellular phone and pager numbers, each clearly identified. She looked at it but made no move to accept it, so he leaned forward, claimed her hand, forced the paper into it and folded her fingers over it. “Call me.” The words were shaky, more of a plea than a request.
Then he turned and walked away. As he did, he knew he was making a mistake. It was the wrong thing to do... but he did it anyway.
Clutching the banister with one hand, Faith slowly sank onto the third step. She should be pleased. Nick was returning to Houston, as she had asked, as she had insisted—to both him and herself—that she wanted him to. He was—for now, at least—out of her life. She had won the battle.
So why did she feel as if she’d lost the war? Why did she feel the same sense of abandonment that had swept over her that February morning when she’d realized that he’d slipped out of the house during the early morning hours? Why did she feel the same shock that she’d felt when Michael had announced the news of his brother’s phony wedding? Why had some foolish part of her believed that he would stay, that he would find it impossible to walk away from his own little girl?
She gave a great sigh that sounded too much like a sob. Then suddenly tears were running down her cheeks. She hated tears, hated all the lonely times she’d given in to them, hated all the bleak memories they conjured up. She had cried often as a child—when the yearning for her mother was too much to bear, when other kids teased her, when their parents snubbed her, when Great-aunt Lydia was being unusually stern. She had taken refuge in her room, back in the darkest, coziest corner of her closet, and she had cried for all the injustices, all the loneliness, all the helplessness. One day when she was seventeen, when her friends were dating, having fun and leading normal teenage lives while she was living by standards as old as this house, she had decided to turn off the tears. Nothing was so bad th
at it needed crying over. Not the loneliness, not the emptiness, not even Great-aunt Lydia’s death.
But this sense of loss—this was worthy of her tears. She had cried Wednesday when she realized that Nick had absolutely no memory of her and the intimacies they’d shared, and she would cry now for the last time. Any future tears, she decided with a damp smile, would be tears of joy.
Raising her hand to wipe her cheeks, she realized that she was still holding tightly to the paper he’d made her take. She smoothed it on her lap, then stared at the four phone numbers. Did he honestly think she would ever want to call him? After she’d spent three days convincing him that she and Amelia Rose didn’t need him, did he really believe that a circumstance existed that might change her mind? Not when convincing him had been so stressful. Not when she knew now that she still needed a little convincing herself.
Getting to her feet was something of a struggle. When she made it, she took a deep breath, then padded barefoot down the hall to the parlor. There she dropped the paper atop the ash in the fireplace, struck a match and let it fall in the middle of the page. The center turned black first, then flames licked out to curl the edges. In a few seconds the fire burned out, leaving only a delicate square of ash that disintegrated as soon as she stabbed it with the poker.
“No more Nick,” she said out loud, then patted her belly. “It’s just you and me, babe.”
The way it always had been.
The way it probably always would be.
Twenty-four hours and three hundred miles hadn’t improved Nick’s disposition any. He sat in a restaurant Sunday afternoon, bowls of tortilla chips and salsa in front of him, a frozen margarita in a tall glass beside them, and scowled at the world. He’d almost gotten lost twice on the way home yesterday—on a route that he’d traveled countless times in the past twelve years—because his mind had been preoccupied not by his destination but by the place he was leaving behind. Or, more precisely, the people he was leaving behind. He’d finally made it home around eleven, tired and badly in need of sleep, but instead he’d spent most of the night dozing fitfully, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling or dreaming—and it wasn’t the same sweet, hazy eroticism he’d almost grown accustomed to in recent months. Oh, Faith was in the dreams, all right, but so was a tiny dark-eyed girl as fragile as her mother and as familiar as his own self. Faith’s daughter. His daughter. Sweet, little, helpless and innocent, just waiting to be loved.
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