He glanced at his watch. "I'd better shove off pretty soon. I don't want to miss the flight."
His mother started to say something but stopped abruptly. He saw the way her attention was riveted to the beautiful little girl on his lap. Did she see the resemblance to her own little girl? Did his parents have any idea what they were missing by turning away from their granddaughter?
"Can I call the airport?" he asked.
"Use the kitchen phone," said his mother. "Near the pantry door."
He seated Daisy on a nest of cushions and headed for the kitchen.
When he came back into the living room his father had the baby on his lap. His father's hazel eyes were glistening but that could have been the reflection of the sun on his glasses.
Hunter picked up his duffel. "I'd better change Daisy before I leave."
His mother looked up at him. "I'll do it," she said. "If you don't mind."
And that was how it began.
His mother changed the baby. His father shot a roll of film. Daisy, as usual, worked her magic on them all and the ice slowly started to thaw. There were still thirty-four years of problems to be solved, but Daisy discovered her grandparents and, more importantly, they discovered her.
His parents walked Hunter and Daisy out to the rental car.
"Why don't you stop back here on your way home to New York?" his father asked, clapping his son on the back. "We'd like to meet your new bride."
"We'd enjoy it, Hunter," said his mother, her blue eyes shimmering with tears. "We could give a lovely dinner party for you both to celebrate." She gave Daisy a big hug. "You're a beautiful little girl," she murmured. "As beautiful as your mommy was."
His father noisily cleared his voice. Hunter knew that old trick. Every American male who had ever been embarrassed by emotion knew that trick.
"You're doing a good job, son," he said gruffly. "Your sister would have been real happy."
Hunter shook hands with his father. He hugged his mother. Daisy accepted their kisses with a gurgling laugh. He'd taken the first step and his parents had met him halfway, something he wouldn't have believed possible a few short days ago.
"We're not going to take no for an answer, are we, Daisy?" he asked as the jet roared into the sky.
Miracles happened. The fact that he and Jeannie had met and married was proof of that.
And he couldn't help but believe there was one more miracle waiting for him on the beaches of Maui.
The production shut down early Thursday afternoon when some clouds blew in from the west, making the requisite blue-sky shots impossible.
"Have fun, boys and girls," said the director, "but remember: vacation's over tomorrow morning at seven."
"The production gang's going to check out Hosegawa's General Store," Denise said to Jeannie as they gathered up their gear, "and then ride out to see the Seven Sacred Pools. Why don't you come with us?"
"Thanks for the invitation," Jeannie said, "but I think I'll pass."
"We're going to have a great time," Denise urged. "Jacko said he might teach us the hula."
"As tempting as that sounds, I'm going to stick close to the hotel."
"Those baby Terminators getting you down?"
Jeannie smiled. "Either I'm getting older or they're getting tougher."
The truth was, all she wanted was a long soak in a fragrant bubblebath, dinner on the veranda, and sleep. Mindless sleep. She was tired, but work wasn't the cause. It was the endless litany of regrets.
Once back at the hotel she stopped at the front desk. "Any messages for Room 5?"
The clerk, a woman with friendly brown eyes, shook her head. "Nothing today."
So what was she expecting? She'd walked out on him without so much as leaving him a note or a telephone number.
She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. If she figured correctly, it was a little after eight p.m. back home. Daisy would be sound asleep while Hunter was probably finishing supper and watching the Mets on the little TV in the kitchen.
"Call him," she said out loud. "Pick up the phone and let him know where you are. You're not in the witness protection plan."
Daisy...Burnett...the whole mess she'd left behind. She had to know.
"Hi," said a mechanical voice almost six thousand miles away. "You've reached Hunter and Jeannie Phillips. If you leave your name and number, we'll call you back as soon as we can."
Beep.
"Hunter, it's me...are you there?" She waited. Was he standing there in the hallway, glaring at the answering machine? "I'm at the White Orchid on Maui. I--what I mean is, I was wondering about Daisy and...are you there, Hunter?"
Nothing.
She placed the receiver down. A thousand possibilities, all of them dreadful, occurred to her. What if Burnett had claimed paternity and Hunter had handed Daisy over to him without even putting up a fight? What if they'd gotten into a knockdown fight and Hunter was in jail for assault and battery?
Or maybe he just didn't want to talk to her.
"This is ridiculous," she said. Hunter had made it perfectly clear that the decisions about Daisy were his to make, same as she'd chosen to keep her own counsel when it came to the family she'd lost.
She and Hunter had a wedding but they'd never quite managed to have a marriage.
And it hurt her to know that she was every bit as much to blame as he was.
They called it "Heavenly Hana," a place so breathtakingly beautiful that once you saw it you never wanted to leave. Gorgeous vistas, eye-popping sunsets, a Disneyland version of paradise on earth.
Hunter would have to take their word for it because as he stood beneath the banyan tree at the edge of the veranda, all he could see was his wife.
She sat with her back to him, looking out toward the ocean. Her short hair was slicked back, curling slightly at the nape of her neck as if she'd just stepped out of the shower. Everything about her was lovely: the graceful line of her shoulders which were bared by her sapphire blue dress, the pale apricot color of her skin in the glow of the setting sun.
She seemed so alone, yet perfectly self-contained. He'd always sensed that his wife was a woman of secrets, but never more so than at this moment. She looked so small, so incredibly fragile, yet he had the feeling there was hidden steel. She was a fighter, his Jeannie, a woman who stood up for what she believed.
He wondered if she still believed in their marriage.
He moved closer and closer, until he stood at her elbow.
"You can take my plate," she said, not looking up. "I'm finished."
"Great," he said, "but I'm not."
"Oh God," she whispered, lowering her head. "It can't be...."
"Jeannie."
Swallowing hard, she turned around.
"I look like hell," he said. "I need a shave. I slept in these clothes. All I could think of was getting here."
His collar was open and his sleeves rolled up. He looked totally out-of-place in this tropical wonderland, strung-out and exhausted, and yet he was the most beautiful sight she'd ever seen.
But where was Daisy?
"You're a hard woman to find," he said.
She looked away. The intensity of his gaze was overpowering. "Something's happened," she said. "It's Daisy, isn't it?"
"Yes," he said, "it's Daisy."
She felt as if the ground were moving beneath her feet. She met his eyes. "Is Burnett her father?"
"No," said Hunter. "I am."
Hope, painful and sweet, came to life inside her heart. "I--I don't understand."
"It's really pretty simple," he said. "Burnett and Callie gave Daisy her blue eyes and dimples. I took care of the rest."
She listened as he told her the story of a man and a woman, of an attraction that should never have been. And of a baby Callie had been praying for, but one that Burnett couldn't quite believe was on its way.
"They'd been seeing each other for a month," Hunter explained. "Burnett was giving a seminar that spring in Tokyo and Callie was wo
rking as his translator."
Burnett was a married man and the father of three, part of a distinguished and highly political family.
"The situation suited them both. He wasn't looking for a new family and Callie had already determined that the baby would belong to her and nobody else." Even after Callie learned that the pregnancy had put her life at risk, she was determined to see it through. "Burnett was in Caracas by then, working on a project for OPEC, but he helped Callie find the best doctors in Tokyo."
She saw the way the muscles in his cheek were working as he tried to control his emotions. "Hunter, you don't have to--"
He cleared his throat. "Burnett saw my sister the month before she delivered Daisy. I don't know why--maybe she had a premonition or something--but she told Burnett that if anything happened to her, she wanted me to raise the baby."
"And he didn't object?"
Hunter laughed ruefully. "Burnett is a practical man. He hadn't been looking to become a father again. He was relieved."
"So why did he show up at your apartment?"
"Sentiment. To give me Callie's paintings." He smiled tiredly. "To see Callie's child just once."
Jeannie's heart was racing and she placed a hand against her chest as if to slow the rapid beating. "And that's it?"
"That's it. I stormed over to Burnett's hotel that night loaded for bear and the first thing he told me was that he had no claim on Daisy." He fixed her with a look. "You were right, Jeannie...about all of it. She's my daughter. She has been from the very start."
Jeannie's eyes burned with tears. "Better late than never, Hunter. I knew you'd come around."
"And that brings me to the next question: where do we go from here?"
She pushed back her chair and clumsily rose to her feet. She was so filled with emotion that she thought she would die from it. He stood there right in front of her, almost daring her to walk past. Turning, she tried to dart around him, but he stepped in front of her.
"Not this time," he said. "You're not running out on me tonight." With one sudden move he tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, and started for the beach.
"Put me down, Hunter, or I'll have you arrested!"
"Go ahead," he said. "That won't stop me." He continued striding down to the beach like Rambo in Love.
"I'm humiliated," Jeannie said, trying to cover her face while hanging upside down. "If any of the crew sees me this way, I'm finished."
"There isn't a soul around," he said. "You're safe." He rounded a cluster of palm trees then dumped her unceremoniously in a clump of beach grass.
Her bottom smarted like the very devil, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of letting him know.
"You were right," he said without preamble. "I used you. Everybody was right--Kate, Grantham, the whole damn bunch."
She felt as if she'd been punched in the gut. "You flew all the way to Hawaii to tell me that?"
"No. I flew here to tell you this: I love you, Jeannie."
She recoiled as if he had struck her a blow.
He pretended he hadn't noticed. Nothing was going to stop him from telling her what was in his heart. "I thought marrying you would make everything perfect. Perfect for me. Perfect for Daisy. I never asked myself if it was perfect for you." He met her gaze. "You changed our lives, Jeannie. You made that apartment into a home. But I can't figure out what you got out of the deal." All the bad jokes his colleagues had made carried with them a glimmer of truth. Jeannie had turned his life around, creating happiness where there'd been chaos.
How could he know he'd given her back her heart?
"Hunter," she began, her voice a whisper. "There's something I have to tell you...."
Once upon a time Jeannie had had two daughters and a husband who loved her, but a fire one icy morning had changed her life forever, leaving Jeannie alone and filled with guilt that she had lived while those she loved had not.
She'd moved from Oregon to Chicago; from San Francisco to Seattle; only to end up in New York, doing the one thing she was good at: working with babies.
Hunter listened, stroking her hair, as she struggled with what once was. The act of telling him her story released the floodgates and the guilt she had carried around for so long began to wash away.
"Am I a substitute?" he asked, forcing her to meet his eyes again. "Is Daisy?"
"No," she whispered. "Never that." She loved Hunter and Daisy for who they were, not in memory of those she had lost.
"I love you," he said quietly. "Not what you can do for Daisy and me--you, Jeannie, and whatever you need to be happy." Those days without her had been a taste of things to come, an endless lonely string of nights without the woman he loved.
He reached for her hand, touching the gold ring on her finger. "We may have to do it all over again," he said, "just to make sure it's legal."
She hesitated, the words trapped inside her heart. She'd bared her soul and he hadn't bowed beneath the weight of her secrets.
Here it was, the commitment she had been running from every day since the fire. Another life. Another chance at happiness. Another chance to lose everything...
But wasn't that what life was about, taking chances, huge leaps of faith that sometimes led you all the way to paradise?
"I love you, Hunter," she said at last, understanding the full weight of those beautiful words. "I think we can make it work."
"I know we can." Desire made for a wonderful beginning, but romance alone wasn't enough to make a marriage successful. It took honesty and vulnerability and compassion, and that evening on the beach at Hana they took the first step toward making their marriage work.
"All I've ever wanted is a husband and family of my own," Jeannie said. "These past four weeks have been so wonderful...." She cleared her throat. "I would have done anything to make it last."
"I want you," Hunter said. "At home. At work. With a career. Without one. I don't give a damn if the house comes down around our ears and we have to hire a fleet of nannies and housekeepers to take care of things." Everything she was, was everything he needed.
The kiss they shared was one of communion, a melding of souls as well as a blending of hearts.
"Daisy," she said, finally breaking the kiss. "Where is she?"
Laughing, he reached for his wife's hand and helped her to her feet. "I thought you'd never ask."
He led her back to the patio where a smiling waiter sat with a sleepy Daisy on his lap.
Jeannie's happy tears spilled down her cheeks and onto the baby's golden head as she hugged Daisy tight. "We're so lucky," Jeannie said, meeting his eyes. "Luckier than I ever believed possible."
"And it's going to last a long time," Hunter said. "A lifetime."
Daisy's little face puckered in a frown. "Daah," she said uncertainly. Then, smiling up at Hunter: "Da-da!"
"You bet I am, Daisy," he said, drawing his wife and daughter close. "You just bet I am."
About the Author
BARBARA BRETTON is the USA Today bestselling, award-winning author of more than 50 books. She currently has over ten million copies in print around the world. Her works have been translated into twelve languages in over twenty countries and she has received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Many of her titles are also available in audio.
Barbara has been featured in articles in The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Romantic Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Herald News, Home News, Somerset Gazette, among others, and has been interviewed by Independent Network News Television, appeared on the Susan Stamberg Show on NPR, and been featured in an interview with Charles Osgood of WCBS, among others.
Her awards include both Reviewer's Choice and Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times; a RITA nomination from RWA, Gold and Silver certificates from Affaire de Coeur; the RWA Region 1 Golden Leaf; and several sales awards from Bookrak. Ms. Bretton was included in a recent edition of Contemporary Authors.
Barbara lives in New Jersey with her hu
sband and a houseful of pets. When she’s not writing, she can be found knitting, cooking, or reading.
For more information
www.barbarabretton.com
[email protected]
Also by Barbara Bretton
Collections - Anthologies
Happily Ever After: Three Complete Romances
Home Front: Three novels of love, war, and family
Happily Ever After 2: Five Complete Romances
Second Time Around: The Wedding Bundle – two novellas
Now and Forever: The Complete Crosse Harbor Trilogy
The Home Front Trilogy
The Wilde Sisters
Operation: Husband
Operation: Baby
Operation: Family (not yet released)
The Crosse Island Harbor Time Travel Trilogy
Somewhere in Time
Tomorrow & Always
Destiny’s Child
Pax Romantic Adventure Series
Playing for Time
Honeymoon Hotel
A Fine Madness
All We Know of Heaven
Sugar Maple Chronicles
Casting Spells
Laced with Magic
Spun by Sorcery
Charmed: A Sugar Maple Short Story
Spells & Stitches
Paradise Point
Shore Lights
Chances Are
Rocky Hill Romances
Mrs. Scrooge
Bundle of Joy
The Year the Cat Saved Christmas
Just in Time
Annie’s Gift (not yet released)
Idle Point
At Last
Someone Like You
Shelter Rock Cove
A Soft Place to Fall
Girls of Summer
Home Front
Where or When
Sentimental Journey
Stranger in Paradise
Historical Romances
Midnight Lover
Fire’s Lady
Reluctant Bride
Daddy's Girl (Bachelor Fathers) Page 15