No, he couldn’t. “I didn’t actually find her,” Hawk explained. “She died a long time ago, when we were babies.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. God, he hated the idea of telling her everything.
But it wasn’t all bad news.
“I found a couple of pictures. You look just like her.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. And do you remember when we were kids and when I did something that annoyed you, you’d say, ‘My other brother would never be mean to me. My other brother would play dolls with me.’”
“My imaginary other brother,” Cassie said softly, her words almost lost over the bad signal.
“Not so imaginary after all,” Hawk said.
The cell signal got worse. Cassie’s response was broken and distant.
“I’ll call you later when I have a better signal,” he said, rising with the file in one hand and the phone in the other. “Make that tea and give it a try.”
“Don’t forget to call me back,” Cassie said urgently.
“I won’t.”
Hawk opened the truck door for Baby, who leaped in and took her place in the passenger seat. He then placed the file on the floor of the back seat, in a secure position where it wouldn’t move around too much.
He was glad to leave the old farmhouse behind. Even though he couldn’t possibly remember living there, the place gave him the creeps. Maybe if it had been lived in over the years, he’d feel differently, but spending time in that house was too much like meandering through a graveyard.
“We’re going home, Baby,” he said as they pulled off the dirt drive and onto the road.
She answered with a very uncertain growl.
“Don’t give me that,” he said as he accelerated. “You knew when we came here that we weren’t going to stay.”
The sound that emitted from Baby’s throat was very much like a whining complaint.
“It’s better this way,” he answered. “A clean break for both of us.”
Baby barked once, then stuck her head out the window.
“Fine,” Hawk said softly. “Ignore me. Don’t talk to me. Tell me I’m an ass. You’re not the first one to say that, and you won’t be the last.”
Hawk braked at a stop sign. If he turned right, he’d be headed for the interstate. If he turned left, he’d be on that winding road that led to Wyatt.
A clean break really was for the best. Yeah, there were things he wanted to tell Sheryl that he hadn’t found the time to say, but what difference did that make?
Baby pulled in her head and stared at him. She waited, just as Hawk waited, for the decision to be made.
A car stopped behind the idling truck, and after a moment the driver honked his horn impatiently. Hawk glanced in his rearview mirror. With the afternoon sun on the wind-shield, he couldn’t see the driver’s face, but a black-clad arm hung out of the open window.
The driver honked again, and this time that black-clad arm raised up and the frustrated driver gave Hawk the international hand symbol for “Where the hell did you learn how to drive?”
“I’m an idiot to the core,” Hawk said as he turned, ignoring the finger. Baby stuck her head out of the window and smiled as the wind brushed back her ears and her blond hair.
Sheryl sat at the kitchen table and wrote as quickly as she could, afraid that she might forget something if she didn’t get it all down now. She didn’t know Hawk’s address, but she did remember Greenlaurel, Texas. The letter would find him. If she mailed it first thing in the morning, it should get there shortly after Hawk got home.
She shouldn’t care, but she did, dammit. She had a vested emotional interest in that annoying, stubborn, impossible man, and she didn’t want to see him hurting the way he did. She couldn’t fix his life, she couldn’t give him everything he wanted. But she could give him this.
Laverne came to the table, pacing and mewing.
“I’ve already fed you,” Sheryl said. “You don’t need another bite.”
After a few minutes of pacing and switching her tail, a very antsy Laverne bolted from the kitchen. Funny, the only other time Sheryl had seen the cat act this way was when—
She jumped up from the kitchen table and walked slowly to the front door. Bruce, who was in his cage once again, began to squawk.
All three cats and both dogs were waiting in the entryway, eyes anxiously on the door, bodies absolutely still. They didn’t turn to look at her, they didn’t acknowledge one another in any way. She had never seen them all so unnaturally still, so deeply and completely expectant.
Sheryl knew what was coming, and when the doorbell rang she still jumped out of her skin. Not that she didn’t know exactly who was standing on her front porch.
She hesitated, and the doorbell rang again. Twice. Laverne looked back at Sheryl and mewed loudly.
“If you’re so anxious to see him, you open the door,” Sheryl said softly.
“Come on, Sheryl,” Hawk called. He didn’t ring the bell again, but he knocked loudly. “I know you’re here.”
Of course he knew. And she should have known better than to think Hawk Donovan would walk away quietly because—hint, hint—she wasn’t answering her door.
The animals parted when she moved toward the door, and the knocking stopped. Was Hawk leaving, or had he heard her soft step on the floor?
She opened the door, taking a deep breath as she tilted her face up to look into the eyes of the man she had never thought she’d see again.
Something had changed. She saw the change in those dark eyes, and in the set of his mouth. His anger was…not gone, exactly, but faded. Controlled. No, she could not say that he was happy, but neither was he frustrated.
“I found it,” he said, holding up a thick sheaf of papers precariously caught in a manila folder.
Sheryl smiled. “In that last box?”
He shook his head. “At the farmhouse. It was hidden behind a picture. I think my mother hid it from him. My father. Not my father, actually,” he added quickly. “Legally, maybe, but not…not. And I found what Cassie needs, I think. I’ve already called her. Since you were such a help to me, I thought maybe you’d like to know.”
“Thanks.”
Sheryl looked him in the eye, unafraid. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would turn away just because there was an uncomfortable strain in the air, just because there were so many things that could not be said.
Had she fallen in love with his eyes first? Maybe so. They were so dark, so mysterious, and yet when he gave nothing of himself in any other way, she saw the emotion in those expressive eyes. Everything he’d never say to her was there.
He turned away and started walking toward the truck, which was parked at the curb. Baby followed.
Sheryl stepped onto the front porch. “Hey!”
Hawk stopped on the walk and turned to face her.
“That’s it?” she said. “You came to my house just to tell me that?”
“I thought you’d want to—”
“Of course I want to know,” she interrupted. “But you could have called or written me a letter. You didn’t have to come all the way back here just to give me an update.”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
He’d wanted to see her again, whether he would admit it or not. And heaven knows it was good to see him. More than good. It was necessary, like coming up out of the deep water and taking air into her lungs.
“Thanks for the update, but I want to know more. I want to know everything. How about letting me have a peek inside that file everyone’s so anxious to get their hands on?”
For a moment he didn’t say a word. “Are you sure you’re interested?” he asked.
Sheryl smiled. “Of course I’m interested. I might actually have something to add, if you have the time to sit for a few minutes.”
“Sure,” he said casually.
Even though there was nothing casual about this.
He came inside, greeted all the
animals, and then left Baby to entertain her friends while the two of them went into the kitchen. Sheryl moved her letter off the table and made room for Hawk to lay out what he’d found. He was so excited about his treasure that he didn’t even notice when she slipped the letter into her pocket.
“There’s so much here, I don’t know where to start,” he said. “This is her.” The photo was larger than the snapshot they’d found buried in the fertility clinic files. Sharper and clearer.
“There’s definitely a family resemblance,” she said.
“She looks just like Cassie.”
“And more than a little like you.”
Hawk shrugged that comment off as if it didn’t matter, but she suspected it did matter. Very much.
“Most of this is technical jargon I don’t fully understand,” he said as he flipped through the pages, “but I understand things now that have been mysteries to me all my life. Things like—” He hesitated.
Maybe he was overwhelmed by what he’d found. Maybe it was too much. But she was so glad he’d found his answers. He deserved that much.
“It must’ve been difficult, not knowing who your parents were.”
“It’s more than that.” He closed the file but kept his hand over it as if the entire thing might fly away if he didn’t hold it down.
Whatever it was he didn’t seem inclined to share, so Sheryl took from her pocket the letter she’d been writing and laid it on the table before her. “I found a few interesting details myself this afternoon.”
“Such as?”
She looked down at the words she’d written. “Your mother came from Romania.” She glanced up briefly. So, that was where those gypsy eyes had come from. “She married Benedict Payne because she needed a green card, but she wasn’t married long before she knew she’d made a mistake. But she’d made a promise and she decided to make the best of her situation. She—”
“How do you know this?”
Sheryl lifted her head and looked Hawk in the eye. “I asked a few questions of my own this afternoon. My questions were a little different from yours and I talked to different people. People who knew her. Do you want to know more?”
He nodded slowly, and Sheryl returned her gaze to the paper. “Deanna Payne loved gardenias and chocolate pie and made a kick-ass spicy stew. She wanted very much to fit into her new life in Wyatt, but was never truly comfortable here. She always felt like an outsider, though she did try to adapt. Even though she didn’t love her husband, she wanted children very much. She believed that they would fill the void in her life, that maybe they would even cure the ills of her marriage.”
Hawk was so still, she wasn’t sure he was even breathing. His gaze was pinned not to the note in her hand, but to her face.
“She liked the color blue,” Sheryl continued, “and sunsets, and a framed print she found at a flea market that looked very much like her native Romania.”
“The one that was hanging in the farmhouse.”
She glanced up. “Maybe.”
“It’s where she hid this.” His fingers brushed the file.
“Her husband took her away from the friends she was starting to make here in Wyatt. He rented that farmhouse from the landowner, who’d built a new and better place up the road. The farmer didn’t care for Dr. Payne, but he did take a liking to your mother. After she was killed there, he couldn’t bear to rent the house to anyone else. It’s been sitting empty ever since.”
Sheryl didn’t need to read the rest of her incomplete letter. “She was a good person, Hawk. I don’t know exactly what happened to your mother after she left Wyatt, but I know she loved you.”
“How do you know that?” he asked brusquely.
“How could she not?” She handed him the letter, and he took it.
He didn’t add her letter to the thick file, but folded it and tucked it into his shirt pocket. “Thanks. This means a lot to me. It’ll mean a lot to Cassie, too.”
He reached out and touched her face, looking very much as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if he could…or if he should. There was a light in his eyes, a light she knew. He hadn’t come to Wyatt looking for her, but by golly he’d found her. What were they going to do about that?
Hawk’s hand on her face was gentle and strong. Like him. He hid the gentle side of himself. It was possible she was the only one who had seen it, but it was there. It was hers. Why couldn’t she just tell him that she needed him? Why couldn’t he admit that what they had was much more than they’d expected or wanted?
He leaned forward slightly, as if he were thinking of kissing her, but all of a sudden the quiet was broken by barking, mewing and Bruce squawking, “Holy mackerel!”
Since the commotion might’ve been started by something as simple as a squirrel spotted through the living room window, Sheryl was not concerned. It was the fact that the barking and mewling didn’t stop that bothered her.
She went to investigate and Hawk followed her.
“Holy mackerel!” Bruce called again.
“Did you teach him to say that?” Sheryl asked.
“Yeah,” Hawk answered. “Seemed preferable to his usual colorful comments.”
“Definitely.”
The pets showed no sign of calming down, but ran in circles and made all sorts of noise. Hawk squatted down in front of Baby, who could not keep her feet still, and laid his hand on her head. Immediately the yellow dog froze, and so did the others.
The quiet was more disturbing to Sheryl than the commotion had been.
Hawk stood quickly. “Someone’s prowling around the house. A man who doesn’t belong here.” He headed for the front door, and Baby followed.
“How do you—”
“Stay,” he said, and Sheryl, along with Baby, came to a dead stop.
Had he been talking to her? Had he ordered her to stay? She should be insulted.
As Hawk went out to investigate, Sheryl came to the conclusion that Debbie’s brother-in-law might be out and about. Or the kids down the block cut through her yard again, the way they sometimes did.
She still had her money on squirrels.
A few minutes later, Hawk came back in through the front door. He had the oddest expression on his face, as if he were worried and puzzled, and he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Find anything?” she asked.
“No, but…”
“But what?”
Hawk dropped the hand that had been massaging the back of his neck. “Did you ever get the feeling that someone was watching you?”
“Sure, a time or two.”
“It was the oddest thing. While I was walking around the house, the back of my neck prickled, and I got this twisting knot in my gut. I swear, my knees even went a little wobbly.”
“Did you have lunch?” she asked.
“No, but—”
“Breakfast?”
He shook his head.
“Then you’re hungry. I’ll make you a bite to eat. If you want to stick around awhile, that is.”
“I really should get on the road,” Hawk protested. But not very enthusiastically.
It would be stupid and girlie and pathetic of her to try to change his mind, wouldn’t it? Hawk didn’t want to stay. Whatever they’d had was over. They had known from the beginning that what they had was temporary. “You could stay the night and leave early in the morning.” She tried not to sound too pushy or needy. Her suggestion was simply practical. “It’s too late for you to get very far today. Right?”
“True enough,” he said. “And I am hungry.” He seemed to accept the explanation for his weak-kneed symptoms readily enough.
They walked into the kitchen, and as soon as they entered the room Hawk came to a dead halt. “Where is it?” he asked softly.
“Where’s what?”
“The file!” He spun on her. “What did you do with it?”
She looked past him to the round oak table, where the file he’d found at the farmhouse had been left when the a
nimals’ uproar had called them from the room.
The tabletop was bare.
Chapter 13
It had been simple enough to slip the lock on the kitchen door, walk inside and swipe the documents Eldanis and her friend had been going over with such interest.
Anthony was miles away from Wyatt before he pulled the car over to the grassy shoulder and snagged the file from the passenger seat. It had been an exciting day. The man in the pickup with the Texas plates had almost caught him earlier in the afternoon. Anthony couldn’t think of any reason for the man to sit at that stop sign for such a long time, unless he’d suspected that someone was tailing him. But in the end, the Texan hadn’t been suspicious at all, just indecisive.
His heart was beating too fast, and he wasn’t sure why. This hadn’t been his most dangerous job, not by a long shot. Even if the Texan had caught him, it wouldn’t have mattered. He would have escaped. He would have slipped through the Texan’s fingers.
Anthony rubbed the back of his neck with one hand while he opened the file with the other. He tried to chase away the odd feelings that had come over him while he’d been in that farmhouse and again while the Texan had been chasing him.
After a restless night’s sleep, he’d almost convinced himself that last night in the farmhouse he’d suffered some sort of hallucination. But then again this afternoon he’d gotten chills as he’d escaped from the Eldanis woman’s house. Chills and wobbly knees and a twisting in his stomach. Maybe he was coming down with a cold, or had eaten something bad.
The picture in the file ended all curiosity about the odd sensations he’d suffered in the past twenty-four hours. He wasn’t suffering from hallucinations; he didn’t have a cold; there had been nothing wrong with the food he’d been eating.
It was her. His mother. Seeing that face brought so many memories back, memories that hit him like a ton of bricks and left him winded. In a way he wished he hadn’t found this file, because anything that caused this sort of weakness was unwanted. In his business, weakness was more than a character flaw; it was potentially deadly.
But it was already too late to take back what he’d found. Closing the file and trying to forget wouldn’t erase the memories that had escaped.
A Touch of the Beast Page 16