Amanda stood in the center of the room, barefoot, twisting her hands together, and watched him. Her breath was coming quickly, through parted lips.
“How long have you known?” he said. His voice was flat, almost expressionless.
She started to breathe a bit easier. At least he isn’t angry, she thought. If they could just talk this out... “Always,” she said, almost eagerly.
He looked at her sharply. “That damned shyster of a lawyer promised to keep it secret. You should never have known who Nicky was, or where he went.”
“The attorney didn’t tell me who you were, Chase – just that he’d arranged a wonderful home for my baby.”
He said something under his breath that she was glad she hadn’t quite caught. But there was an edge to his voice; it seemed she had overestimated Chase’s calm.
Amanda ran the tip of her tongue over her dry lips. “To be perfectly accurate, I haven’t known always. Just since the day I saw Nicky’s picture on the cover of Today’s Woman, with Desiree – the one that was taken when he was three weeks old.”
“You recognized him, I suppose?” Chase sounded sarcastic. “Out of all the babies in the world, you just knew this one was yours?”
She didn’t blame him. “It does sound a bit foolish, doesn’t it? But I did. He looked exactly like my pictures as an infant.”
Chase shook his head in disbelief. “Don’t you think it’s a pretty steep coincidence that you just happened to run across that magazine?”
“No. I’d been following the progress of the movie, you see.” He didn’t answer, and after a moment, Amanda went on almost tentatively. As long as he was listening... “Even though I wasn’t here in Springhill, it was pretty exciting to read about you and Desiree and Winter of the Heart and know it was all happening in my home town. And I didn’t have much else to do that spring but watch television and read about the stars.”
He looked at her coldly, without a hint of empathy or understanding. But then, Amanda thought, what had she expected?
She cleared her throat. “At any rate, if you remember, Desiree gave all the details about the baby in that interview.”
“Proud mother that she was.”
“Yes.” Amanda’s voice was hollow. “At first I couldn’t believe it – it did seem too much of a coincidence. But the fact that she’d worked all the way through her supposed pregnancy and managed to keep it a secret from everyone just didn’t ring true. And his birth date checked out, and his weight and length, and the little mole on his shoulder. Then I compared that photograph with my baby pictures –”
“And you convinced yourself that Nicky must be yours.”
Amanda looked at him in disbelief. He sounded as if he was going to argue the fact now, after he’d spotted the resemblance himself. “I can give you the attorney’s name. I’d bet even the tabloids have never heard of Luther Bain.”
Chase sighed and shook his head, then paced across the room and stared out at the lightening sky. “When were you planning to drop this bombshell on me, Amanda?”
She shook her head – uselessly, because he wasn’t looking at her. “I wasn’t.”
“Not even when you decided to sleep with me?”
“No. I knew you’d go out of my life soon...”
“Of course you did.” His tone was dry.
She didn’t understand why he was being so sarcastic, but something deep inside her said it was very important that he believe she was telling the truth. “I know it’s confusing –”
“That is the only thing you’ve said so far that I can whole-heartedly agree with!”
She tried again. “But you see, I swore when I gave him up that I would never contact him, or you. I took that vow seriously, Chase.”
He wheeled on her then, and his face was etched with rage. “Dammit, don’t expect me to believe this trash about your ethics! Or about the lawyer’s morals, either. He must have tipped you off. Did he also share the finder’s fee with you? It’s illegal, you know, under the laws of this state, for a birth parent to profit from an adoption. Or didn’t you care whether you were breaking the law?”
She was stunned. Did he honestly think she had sold her baby? Perhaps, she admitted. She’d never given it a thought before, though she hadn’t trusted Luther Bain. If it had been up to her she’d have ditched him a dozen times over. But if the attorney’s finder’s fee had been a large one – and she suspected he would have calculated it to fit the Worthingtons’ wallet – she could see why Chase might believe she had profited, too.
Still, the idea that he actually thought she had sold her baby to the highest bidder made her more furious than she had been in years, and she slashed out at him without even pausing to think.
“If you were an adequate parent,” she said tightly, “you would never have known who I was.”
Chase took two steps toward her. “What the hell – how dare you imply that I’m not! There’s nothing he lacks!”
“Not if you’re talking about stuff, no. But you didn’t even notice when he was sick.”
“That’s what the nanny was for.”
“Oh, yes, the nanny. And what a wonderfully responsible young woman she turned out to be!”
Chase scowled.
“I’d have kept my distance if I had a choice,” Amanda went on. “I never intended to interfere. I gave him up absolutely, and I expected never to see him again. But when you brought him here, and he was lonely and spoiled and neglected –”
“Dammit, Amanda!”
“Yes, he was neglected!” She was shaking with fury. “And so I did what I would have done for any child.”
“You seized the opportunity to make him fall in love with you. You planned this, didn’t you? You’d do anything to get your hands on him.”
“No!”
Chase gave no sign of having heard. “So what’s next, Amanda? Are you going to try to overturn the adoption and sue me for custody? Or are you just going to try your case in the tabloids?”
Amanda sucked in a shocked breath.
“So that’s it.” His voice was soft, but there was nothing gentle about it. “Now that I think about it, no wonder you said so comfortingly that you didn’t believe the tabloid stories of Nicky being my illegitimate son – you knew damned well he wasn’t.” He came toward her, and Amanda sidestepped behind a chair. “I’m amazed you haven’t sold your story yet. Don’t you realize what it’s worth?”
“I would never take money where Nicky’s concerned.”
“You expect me to believe that? There must have been something in the deal for you. Or perhaps you’ve been saving your story till you could add my second folly to the package? Is that why you’ve been throwing yourself at me since I walked through the door of this dreadful little inn?”
“Throwing myself? I have not –”
There was a sleepy little cry from the bedroom. Chase wheeled around to listen for a moment, but there was no further sound; apparently Nicky had subsided into sleep once more.
Chase looked at Amanda. “Get out,” he said curtly. “I’m not going to explain this to him.”
There was nothing else she could do. She didn’t even bother to go back to his bedroom to get her shoes; she simply stumbled down the fire stairs till she reached the safety of her own apartment. She sank onto the floor in her sitting room, ignoring the soft cushions of the couch to pillow her head on the flat-topped trunk.
How could things have gone so abominably wrong? All she had wanted to do was care for a child in need. The fact that he was her own child had been a secret little curl of delight in her heart. She had never expected it to become a stick of dynamite that would destroy her.
If she had told Chase right away that she was Nicky’s mother...
But no, that would have made things no better. He would probably have snatched the child out of her arms and rushed him back to California. Nicky would have been uprooted once more and left behind before he even had a chance to adjust to yet another new nanny..
.
She had made the only choice she could. When she had first taken Nicky into her care, there was no reason for Chase to know the truth; to have told him would only have caused problems. But it wasn’t as if she had lied, either. She was simply carrying out the solemn promise she had made four years ago – a promise she had made as much to Chase himself as to the court which had approved Nicky’s adoption. Couldn’t the man understand that she had taken her vow seriously?
Oh, how very seriously she had thought through that decision – to give her child up irrevocably and forever. She had agonized over it for months, though in truth she had had little choice. With no possibility of support from her parents, with her education only half-completed, already in debt for her tuition, and with no way to make a living for herself – much less bring up a child – her options had been cruelly limited.
In the end, for the sake of her baby, she had sworn away her rights to see him, to talk to him, to watch him grow, to comfort him... because it was better for Nicky to have parents who were financially secure and married and emotionally stable. She had made her sacrifice out of her love for her baby.
Even the fact of Desiree’s death had not erased Amanda’s promise – and nothing ever would. Chase had asked if she would sue for custody, but even if she wanted to, she knew better than to try. No court would overturn the adoption. Even if the finder’s fee Chase had paid had been far above the norm, it had been legal – she was certain Luther Bain had stayed within the letter of the law in order to protect himself.
And despite the harsh accusations Amanda had flung at him, Chase was not a careless or inadequate parent. Even if she could reclaim Nicky, she wouldn’t. Chase was the only father Nicky had ever known; she couldn’t tear him away from that.
And so the only thing Amanda could do was fade away, as gracefully as she could. And if in the secret corners of her heart she hoped that sometimes Nicky might remember the funny lady with the silly parakeet – well, no court in the land could forbid hope.
She raised her face from the trunk. The action took effort; her head felt as heavy as a cannon ball, and as difficult to control.
She opened the trunk and took out the bright-colored quilt, and the scrapbooks. This time she didn’t pause to look at the pictures. Instead, she inserted a fingernail into an almost-hidden slit in the cloth-covered bottom of the trunk, and when she pulled, the false panel lifted out.
The hidden compartment was shallow, no more than three inches deep. But then, she didn’t have much to hide there. Only the few small souvenirs left to her of Nicky’s first two days of life...when he had still been her son, not Chase Worthington’s.
A blurry photograph, snapped in the nursery when he was just an hour old. A plastic identification bracelet which named him as Baby Boy Bailey. A small ball of yellow yarn, the bit left over from the sweater she had knitted for him in the final month as she waited for him to born.
She spread the items carefully out on the top of the trunk. It was a pitifully small group of mementos, and she stared at them for a long time before she put her head down once more.
She didn’t cry. She had done most of that long ago, before he was born.
But it was even harder this time to say farewell in her heart to the child she had carried, because now she was also saying goodbye to the man she had loved.
*****
Amanda had no idea what time it was when the banging started on her door. She didn’t care, either. Sooner or later it would stop.
She was correct about that – but not for long. A few minutes later she heard the click of a key in the lock and felt a surge of air as the door opened. She looked up, only mildly curious, as Stephanie rushed in.
Behind her was the bellman. “I don’t know about this, Mrs. Kendall,” he was saying. “I’m not supposed to use my pass key except when I have orders, and...” He spotted Amanda on the floor and his mouth dropped open. “Are you hurt? Did you fall? Shall I call an ambulance?”
Stephanie’s shrewd gaze rested on Amanda’s face for a moment. She shook her head. “I think you can go back to work now. Thanks, John.” She didn’t move until the door had closed behind him. Then she crossed the room quietly and sank down on the floor beside Amanda. “Want to tell me about it?”
Amanda shook her head.
“This was outside your door.”
Amanda looked at the brown paper bag Stephanie held out. The top of it was tightly folded to keep the contents private, but she had no trouble guessing what was inside. Her shoes, and the rest of her clothes. She wondered why Chase had bothered to bring them down. He could have just thrown them in the wastebasket.
Then she answered her own question. If he had discarded her things, Nicky was likely to see and ask questions.
Nicky...
She had never given her child a name, for she had known almost from the start that he could not be hers to keep, and she thought it might be a little easier that way. But when she had found him in the magazine, and learned what Chase and Desiree had called him, she had hugged the knowledge to her heart. It fit him so perfectly...
“What’s going on?” Stephanie asked lightly. “Chase called me at an absolutely ghastly hour this morning, wanting the name of my day-care center. Are you sick?”
“No.”
Stephanie put a gentle hand on the back of Amanda’s neck and started to rub the taut muscles. “Then what happened? You looked so happy last night when you left the party.”
“That was last night.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
There was a trace of irritation in Stephanie’s voice. “Amanda Bailey, what the hell do you think friends are for, anyway? You’re always here for all of us, but now that you need someone...” She stopped rubbing Amanda’s neck, though her palm still rested, warm and comforting, against the soft skin, and stretched her other hand out to pick up the tiny plastic band which lay on top of the trunk.
Amanda waited.
Stephanie gave a long, deep, discouraged sigh. “Baby Boy Bailey,” she said. “I had no idea.”
“You weren’t meant to. No one in Springhill knows.”
“When did this happen?”
“My junior year in college.”
Stephanie calculated. “Four years ago?”
“Just a little more. He was born early in June.”
“And you told Chase you’d had a baby, and he reacted badly?”
“You could say that. But I didn’t tell him, he guessed.”
“Guessed?” Stephanie shook her head in confusion. “I don’t get this at all, Mandy.”
Amanda reached for the tiny bracelet and stroked it as if it were Nicky’s curls. “My baby...” She paused. It was hard to say the words, and she had never before acknowledged him like this; it had been different with Chase, because he had already known what she was going to say. “My baby is Nicky Worthington.” The words were painful, but there was a sort of relief, too, almost like the instant after he’d been born and her exhausted body could rest for a while.
Stephanie’s hand stilled. “I see.” There was a long silence, and then she stood up.
Amanda wasn’t quite sure if she was afraid of being left, or of where Stephanie might go, and what she might say. She surely wouldn’t confront Chase, would she? “Stephanie, please –”
“I’m not going anywhere. I think both of us could use a cup of tea, that’s all.” She gave Amanda’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “Did you think I was going to walk out on you? It’s a surprise, yes – but now that I think about it, Nicky’s got some of your mannerisms. I guess I thought he’d picked them up in the last week, but there’s the smile, too, and the shape of his chin...”
By the time she came back with two steaming mugs, Amanda had managed to pull herself together a little. She cradled her tea between her palms and stared down at the amber liquid.
Stephanie gestured toward the pile of scrapbooks. “May I?”
Amanda shrugged. “Help
yourself.”
Stephanie leafed through the top book, pausing to look at the magazine cover where Nicky had first been introduced to the world. “Four years,” she mused. “They were making Winter of the Heart... But you weren’t even here then, so how did you meet Chase?”
Amanda was puzzled. “I never did. Not till he came back this summer.”
“But –” Stephanie flushed a little. “None of my business, of course.”
It was only then she realized that Stephanie thought the tabloid stories had been true after all. “Chase isn’t Nicky’s father, Steph.”
Family Secrets Page 14