Adrienne smiled. “Yeah, okay. I’ll just go get my bag. Thank you.”
“Of course.” After an awkward moment when neither of them knew what to do next, Shannon nodded and went back out to the porch, and Adrienne headed upstairs.
“Hey, Badge. I’m going to go back to my apartment and clean up. I think Adrienne—that’s her name, Adrienne—wants a tour of town. I told her you’d do that.”
Badge was clearly not thrilled with that plan. “I’m supposed to stay here and keep an eye on things.”
“Don’t you think it would be smarter to come off as her bodyguard rather than her captor? I know why Isaac told you to be here. He doesn’t trust her. But not letting her leave when she wants to is going to scare her.”
After a moment’s thought, Badge said, “I gotta call Isaac.” He stepped away and did so, then came back to her a minute later. “Okay. You’re staying put, right?”
“Yep. I promise.”
“Okay. Hey, Shannon? That’s your daughter?”
“Yes.” It was disorienting to acknowledge it so simply.
“She’s pretty. Looks just like you.”
“Behave yourself.” Shannon smiled and kissed Badger’s cheek, then went back inside. As she headed to her apartment, she heard the door open behind her, and she turned to see Adrienne going out.
She stood in the middle of her sitting room, buffeted by the memories of the past day. The half-eaten meal she and Show had made was still sitting on the counter. One of the stools there had been overturned when Keith had charged her. She put her hands to her throat with the memory.
She’d been in bed, under the covers, awake but not exactly conscious, when he’d started banging on her door that morning. She hadn’t understood why he was there, but she’d been too thick and muddled to be suspicious. She’d tried to ignore him, only because she was trying to ignore everything, but he wouldn’t stop. So she’d opened the door.
He’d pushed his way in, and before she’d even stopped backing up, he was telling her that her daughter was out in the parlor, waiting to meet her, and she needed to grow up and put this bad-boy fantasy behind her and return to him and her real life. That her past had caught up with her, and the time for hiding was over. That he would take care of her, she knew he’d take care of her, and she had nothing to fear. That she was being a child, but he loved her and he forgave her. That his patience had run out.
Everything he’d said was meant to be encouraging or loving or something, but it all came out domineering and condescending, and all she could think of is why the fuck was he involved with her daughter? How had they become something she had to deal with together? So she’d asked.
Her daughter—Adrienne, her name was Adrienne, which felt strange, because she’d always been Emma to Shannon—had found Keith through the PI she’d hired. And Keith had talked to her, told her that he knew where her mother was and that he could help her make contact.
More than that, she didn’t yet know. She picked up the stool and put it to rights under the bar. Then she cleared the plates and beer bottles away, dumping the food in the sink and pushing it into the garbage disposal and then turning it on. She stared at the hole in the middle of the sink, the water running into it as the disposal churned and swallowed the stale meatloaf and rancid potato salad.
Show had left her yesterday, and, sure he was gone from her life in any way that mattered, and reeling from everything she’d said and relived, and the thought that her daughter was there in the inn, she’d fallen apart like she never had before. She barely remembered the rest of the day or the night.
She shook herself and turned off the disposal and faucet. After stacking the dishes in the sink and throwing the empty beer bottles in the bin underneath, she left the kitchen and headed to the bedroom.
With her head clearer—still not clear, but clearer—Shannon saw the rubble of her room. Her sanctuary. Drawers pulled out, clothes strewn around. Makeup staining her French linens. Her beautiful art deco vanity all but destroyed, the suitcase still resting at an odd angle across it, the round mirror just gone, shards of mirror glass everywhere around it. The door was bowed and cracked, the frame loose on one side. She took it all in, remembering her blinding, deafening panic and Show’s wrath. The way he’d shaken her.
And the way he’d set it aside and instead had held her. Kissed her. Soothed her.
Remembering that, she began to set the room to rights. Once she got started, she couldn’t stop. She cleaned up the glass, stripped the bed, put her clothes away, dusted, vacuumed, remade the bed, put the dirty linens in the wash, then vacuumed again. She found focus and calm in cleaning. It was a way to put order to the past.
She was sweating and about to drop when she finally stopped. Then she took a shower and did the same thing to herself. Washing her hair three times, shaving, exfoliating, scrubbing. She flossed, brushed, and mouthwashed. She combed and blowdried. She moisturized.
She felt better. Still stressed and anxious, but not overwhelmingly so. She dressed in comfortable jeans and a classic, pink oxford-cloth shirt, then went out into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of white wine. Three long swallows, and then she put the wineglass in the sink, next to the dishes from yesterday.
And then she went out to talk to her daughter.
~oOo~
Adrienne and Badger weren’t back yet. Shannon went out to the porch to check if her car was there, and it wasn’t, so she made herself busy—making sure there was cake left over from the weekend (there was) and starting a pot of coffee, then standing at the front desk, checking email and the website, then absently organizing and reorganizing the brochures and maps—trying not to think too much about what would happen, while at the same time trying to rehearse the right things to say.
After about fifteen minutes, Adrienne came through the front door. Shannon took a beat to really see her. One thing they did not have in common was physical shape. Where Shannon was tall and curvy, Adrienne was several inches shorter and slim. She had long legs like Shannon, though. Her hair was very curly and more than halfway down her back, in Shannon’s natural, bright ginger shade. She had a style of dress that was cute and funky—kind of a country/bohemian flair, wearing short (too short—almost Daisy Duke short) cutoffs and cowboy boots, and a light, lacy top that was both demure and sexy, with long loose sleeves and a simple scoop neck, but baring a little belly. She wore a lot of jewelry—leather and silver bracelets several inches up both wrists, several polished stone and silver rings, a few charms on leather straps around her neck. She had a vintage fringed suede purse slung across her chest. Yep. She’d cultivated a look. All she needed was some John Lennon glasses and a headband.
Shannon smiled. “Did you get a good look around our little town?” It felt strange to say “our” town. She hadn’t quite lived here a year, but it was home. She’d told Keith the truth. In twenty years, as good as those years generally were—not that they were perfect—she’d never felt as at home as she did in Signal Bend. A lot of that was Show, but not all of it. Some of it was just these people, who’d been through hell and come out of the fire scarred but standing. They were real.
And she loved this inn. Just Lilli’s vision and hers. No corporate nonsense, no arbitrary formality, no army of staff. Just her and a few people to help, making real connections with guests.
Adrienne smiled and walked up to the desk. “Yeah. It’s cool. You were right—got lots of looks. Badger’s nice, though. He went down to the barn, said you should call if you need him.”
“Good. So, I checked, and there’s lemon chiffon cake in the fridge. And I put a pot on. You want to talk in the kitchen over some sugar and caffeine?” Shannon realized that she’d shifted into her work persona, brightly gregarious, and she wasn’t sure how to turn it down. She was nervous, and she was compensating. Thinking about it wasn’t helping, though, so she rode it out. Better helpful, customer-service Shannon than crazy, fetal-under-the-covers Shannon.
When Adrienne n
odded, Shannon led her to the kitchen and got them settled at the table with thick slices of cake and big cups of coffee. They sat at the table in silence for a few minutes. Adrienne picked at her cake, pulling the fluffy white frosting away with her fork. Shannon held her cup to her face with both hands, watching.
When the discomfort in the room was reaching an absurd level, Shannon put her cup down and said, “I’m sorry. I’m not sure how to start, or what to say or ask, or…” Unable even to know how to finish the sentence, she let it peter out.
Adrienne set her fork on her plate and looked up. “I guess I should start by apologizing for just showing up like this. I thought you wanted to meet me. Keith said…anyway, I know you didn’t, and I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too. He used you, and that sucks. But I’m not sorry you’re here.” When Adrienne dropped her eyes at that, Shannon said, “I know that sounds like a lie, but it’s not.”
She swallowed and asked the scariest question, that one that chilled her heart. But it was the one that would explain, she hoped, why she’d avoided this meeting. “What’s your life like, Adrienne? What was it like to grow up? Were you happy? Are you now?”
Adrienne pushed her plate away a little and tucked her hair behind an ear rimmed with dainty silver hoops. “Yeah. Yeah. My life is…normal, I guess. Happy. Mostly.”
A weight Shannon had carried for twenty years, so long that it had become a part of her, fused to her consciousness, suddenly lifted, and tears were on her so fast she nearly choked on them. Dropping her fork to the table, where it clattered against the little china dessert plate, she put her hands to her throat. The soreness she found there reminded her of Keith and Show, and served as sufficient distraction for her to pull back the sobs and compose herself.
But her daughter regarded her with concern. “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”
Shannon smiled and reached her hand out across the corner of the table, stopping just short of Adrienne’s hand. “No.” She took a calming breath. “It’s…the reason I didn’t want to meet you. I was afraid that I’d left you to a sad life. I was afraid you’d be hurt and angry. I was afraid I’d done the wrong thing. From the time I did it, I was afraid.”
Adrienne smiled and shook her head. “No. My parents are awesome.” A little cloud passed quickly through her eyes then. “Were, or…something.” She huffed and sat up straight. “My mom died a few years ago. But my dad is still awesome.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
She shrugged. “That’s when I started to want to find you. Why I’m here, I guess. I always knew I was adopted. My dad is Jamaican, and my mom had brown hair and brown eyes, so it was never exactly a mystery. I look like I came from Brigadoon. And my little brothers are Korean. We have a family joke about being our own United Nations.”
Shannon laughed, feeling abuzz with relief.
“Anyway, when my mom died, and we were going through all the old family pictures and stuff for the memorial, we found a journal she’d written when they were trying to have a baby, and then when they were trying to adopt. Even my dad never knew about it. It made me love her and miss her even more. And it made me curious about you.”
She’d been staring at the picked-at cake in front of her as she’d spoken; now she raised her eyes to Shannon’s. They were bright with unshed tears, but she was smiling. “I never really thought about it when I was growing up. She was just my mom. She was cool and annoying and I loved her and sometimes I hated her. Even though I knew she wasn’t my bio-mom, I never thought of her as not my mom. I never thought of what she went through because she couldn’t have a baby herself.”
Adrienne’s voice cracked, and she stopped, took a sip from her coffee cup. She lingered over that sip for an extra beat, then met Shannon’s eyes again. “I mainly wanted to find you to thank you. You made my mom really happy.”
Shannon had been pushing back tears since Adrienne had said that she was happy. Now, at those last sentences, she lost the battle utterly. She folded her arms on the table, dropped her head on them and bawled. When she felt Adrienne’s hand on her arm, she bawled harder. She couldn’t have stopped for anything in the world.
She cried until the tears ebbed on their own, and then she stood and grabbed a tea towel from a drawer to wipe her soaked face. Adrienne sat and watched her, but said nothing more.
When Shannon sat back down, she reached across the table again, and this time, she took Adrienne’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “Sorry about that. That was twenty years of fear and regret flushing away.”
Her daughter looked serious and sad. “I’m sorry you were afraid. I know it probably sounds like I’m looking for a new mom, but I’m so not. I had the only mom I ever want. I understand if you don’t want us to know each other. I know that you wanted a closed adoption, and it wasn’t nice of me to force this on you. So I’ll go. I just needed you to know. It helps me with…losing my mom. That’s selfish, though, and I’m sorry.”
Shannon shook her head, the gesture growing more emphatic. “The only reason I didn’t want to meet you was my fear. If you want to know me, then I’m very good with that. I don’t want to be your mom. It sounds like you definitely got the right side of the mom deal. Whatever you want.”
“Can I…stay for a couple of days? You don’t have to entertain me, but maybe we could talk a little?”
“Absolutely. Stay as long as you like. Your father knows where you are, I take it?”
She laughed. “Oh, yeah. I have to text him three times a day or he panics.”
Shannon laughed with her. For what seemed like the fiftieth time in the past day, her life had changed again. Everything she’d known about herself felt like it had been upended and resettled, all of it shifting into a slightly new position. She felt unglued and restored.
She asked, “How about a walk around the grounds?”
With a smile and a nod, Adrienne rose from the table with her, and they headed out back to the garden.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Show sat at the bar with Isaac and Bart, a bottle of Jack and three glasses before them, while Tasha Westby, a doctor, friend of the MC, and Isaac’s old flame, patched Keith up in Show’s dorm room. He was going to be fine. Maybe he wouldn’t be quite so pretty, but Show didn’t mind that at all. The bastard was conscious and chastened, and he’d sworn he wasn’t going to cause any more trouble.
He seemed legitimately sorry for having hurt Shannon. Show didn’t put much stock his regret, but it was keeping him alive—that and his promise to get his ass back to Tulsa and stay there.
Tasha had given them all a long, censorious look when she’d seen her patient, but her father had been Horde, so she knew the drill and said nothing. She just got to work and shooed them out of the room.
Isaac, though, was pissed. Not at Show—who’d come into the clubhouse prepared to deal with Isaac’s temper—but at Bart. He was keeping his cool so far, but Show could see it had a shelf life.
“How did we miss this, Bartholomew? I know you know your work, so how did you miss a whole goddamn kid?” Bart had done a background check on Shannon when Lilli was ready to hire her. They did checks on anyone who got involved with the Horde. Since Lilli owned the B&B, the people who worked there were involved with the Horde, at least enough to warrant checks. She’d come up clean.
Bart looked plenty stressed. “Fuck, boss! I went back fifteen years. She’s clean. Boring. I wasn’t looking for shit she did as a kid. I was looking for shit that could hurt us.”
Show put a calming hand on Bart’s shoulder. “This can’t hurt us, Isaac. She gave her baby up for adoption when she was eighteen. That’s it. We’re not vulnerable there.”
Isaac shook his head. “That baby is twenty now, and she’s got a PI sniffing around Shannon. You are around Shannon.”
“The PI didn’t find her here. He dropped the case when Shannon left Tulsa. That asshole getting his face put back together is the one who sent the girl here.”
“Yeah. A defense lawyer—one that drives a Mercedes S-class, so not the kind that gets appointed to you in the event you can’t afford one. He’s trouble.”
“No. He’s not. This was him going all in. He lost. He’ll go home and mind his business.”
“You willing to stake the club on it?” Isaac stared at Show, challenging him.
And now Show was pissed. He met Isaac’s challenge full on. “I’m telling you this won’t hurt us. Remember you bringing Lilli to me, summer before last? Remember how you knew to trust her, even though she hadn’t been straight with you?”
“And you told me I was thinking with my dick.”
“Was I right?”
Isaac blinked. “No. Shit. Okay. Bart—find something on Mr. Mercedes. I want something solid to hang over him.”
Bart nodded. “Already working it, boss. I’ll get back to it.” He headed for the office.
Isaac turned to Show. “Badger’s guarding the girl. You go back to the B&B and make sure shit’s right over there.”
Show nodded toward the hallway leading to the dorm. “What about him?”
“Best you weren’t around when he’s ready to go. I’ll take him back to his luxury sedan when I take the van back over.”
“Fair enough.” Show swallowed down the rest of his glass of Jack and went out.
~oOo~
When Show pulled up at the B&B, everything looked quiet. Isaac’s bike, Badger’s bike, Shannon’s Beetle, and the girl’s Beetle were parked in the lot. He dismounted and set his helmet on the handlebars, then headed for the house. He wasn’t sure what he’d find inside, but he was heartened to see that everybody’s vehicles were accounted for, indicating, hopefully, that they were all around.
As he climbed the porch steps, movement in his periphery caught his eye, and he looked over to the end of the house. The porch wrapped around, and at the corner hung a swing, providing a nice view of the front of the property. Shannon was sitting alone on the swing, one leg tucked under, her other foot pushing gently to and fro. She was watching him.
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