Emmie wanted to crush him in a hug, but she didn’t dare, not in front of his play group and his teacher. She didn’t want anyone to recognize the turmoil she was operating under, and she didn’t want to embarrass Jeffrey, who had recently decided that public displays of affection were inappropriate, unless he was the one who needed the hug.
Emmie needed a hug now, but she exercised self control and waited until she was strapping him into his car seat before she peppered his face with kisses. In truth, she needed more than a hug from her son; she needed reassurance that her entire life wasn’t about to crumble into a million pieces. Jeffrey couldn’t give her that reassurance, but at least he could convince her they were still a solid team.
“Since I came early, I thought maybe you’d like to go to the community center and play on the pirate ship,” she suggested. What she really wanted was to delay going home, back to the place where she’d seen Michael last night.
“Okay!”
They spent a half hour at the community center playground, and then Emmie delayed the inevitable further by taking Jeffrey out for burgers for dinner. She bought a small sandwich for herself, knowing she’d wind up eating most of his French fries while he played with the toy that came with his meal.
By six-thirty, she’d run out of ways to put off going home. Jeffrey still needed a bath and some reading time, and she had that stack of spelling tests and tomorrow’s lesson plans to review. Reluctantly she drove toward Cullen Drive in the fading daylight, pointing out sights to Jeffrey along the way: “Did you see that robin? Robins are sometimes called robin redbreasts because they have reddish feathers on their bellies. Look at the tulips! Aren’t they pretty?”
Jeffrey was more interested in his new toy.
Reaching her block, she slowed her car—and bit back a curse. Parked in front of her house was the car she’d seen Michael emerge from yesterday. He was back, and for a moment she saw nothing but her own black rage.
If ever she’d wished for an automatic garage-door opener, it was now. She’d love to be able to push a button, watch the door slide open, drive in and have the door shut behind her without her leaving the safety of her car. Sighing, she turned into the driveway, shifted into neutral and climbed out of her car to open the garage door. Just as she’d feared, Michael got out of his car the instant he saw her, and bounded up the driveway toward her.
She cut him off before he could speak. “Don’t say a word.”
He pressed his lips together and glanced into her car, as if he thought she was silencing him so she wouldn’t disturb Jeffrey. Jeffrey was wide-awake, though, peering out through the window in the driver’s side door, his dark eyes so eerily similar to Michael’s that Emmie wanted to slap her hands over Michael’s face so he wouldn’t notice the resemblance.
He’d already noticed. Maybe she just wanted to slap him, period.
“I didn’t invite you here,” she said emphatically, her voice low and tight with anger. “I don’t want you here. If you persist in barging into my life, I’ll have you charged with harassment. Or stalking.”
“I’m not stalking you,” he said with such self-assurance she definitely wanted to slap him. It wasn’t fair that he should be so much more poised than she was. “All I want to do is talk.”
He sounded so insufferably reasonable she knew she would come across as neurotic if she kept fending him off. She needed to consider herself strong and self-assured—and strong, self-assured women weren’t threatened by talk. “I’ve got some things to do,” she said, determined to maintain control over the situation. “If you want to talk, you’ll have to wait.”
“Fine. I’ll wait.”
“Outside. I’m not inviting you in.”
His mouth twitched, as if he couldn’t decide whether to smile or scowl. “So—what do you want me to do? Stand out here until midnight and then give up?”
“I’d be thrilled if you gave up, but I’m not counting on it,” she muttered. “You can stand or you can sit. By midnight I’ll be fast asleep. But I’ve got to get Jeffrey down for the night, and I don’t want you in my way. You can wait on the patio if you’d like. There are chairs there.”
“Jeffrey,” he said, gazing through the window at her son in his car seat.
She didn’t like the way he was looking at her son. “I should be done by around eight-thirty,” she said, just to stop him from staring at Jeffrey. “Maybe you ought to get yourself some dinner and come back.” Because I’m not going to offer you anything to eat, she added silently.
“No, that’s all right. I’ll wait on your patio.” He seemed downright pleased with her brusque instructions. Before she could halt him, he waved at Jeffrey, then headed around the house.
If luck was with her, he would grow bored in the time it took her to give Jeffrey his bath. He would realize how much she loathed him, how wrong it was for him to have hunted her down, and he would disappear while she was stretched out atop Jeffrey’s blanket, reading him the chapter about the Heffalump in Winnie-the-Pooh.
Of course, if luck had been flowing her way, Michael would never have shown-up in the first place.
She couldn’t count on luck. She could count only on whatever bravado she could muster within herself. She would take her time attending to Jeffrey, and then she would steel herself and go outside and do Michael Molina the undeserved favor of listening while he said what he’d gone through so much effort to say. Then she would tell him to get the hell out of her life.
JEFFREY, HE REFLECTED. Jeffrey Kenyon.
Maybe.
Maybe she’d given the boy his father’s last name. Maybe his legal name was Jeffrey Molina. Or maybe—he mustn’t deny the possibility—Jeffrey was the result of some other union with some other man.
Still, Michael had something to work with. Something to tell Maggie’s brother Jack at Tyrell Investigative Services. Something that might lead him to the truth about that little boy’s origins.
The patio was a neat, recently swept slab of cement abutting a rear door. The door had a window in it, and there was another window next to the door. Peering in, Michael saw a relatively tidy kitchen. A yellow cloth covered the table, and the windows were framed with patterned yellow curtains. A pile of mail stood on one counter. A plate and matching cup with cartoon characters on them were propped in a drying rack next to the sink. The appliances didn’t look particularly new or top-of-the-line. Several refrigerator magnets shaped like brightly colored fruits clung to the fridge door.
Turning from the window, he settled into one of the upholstered chairs near a picnic table and surveyed her backyard: trees, grass, a small garden tucked into one corner. The modest size appealed to him.
She’d made a nice home for herself and her son. It wasn’t fancy or pretentious, but it seemed cozy. The yard was the perfect size for a young boy—big enough to explore but small enough to feel safe in.
He would bet Emmie was a good mother, wise and attentive and patient. He’d bet she was well-read in the current theories of childrearing. He’d bet she was goddamn perfect.
Yeah, sure. If she was perfect, she would have welcomed the arrival of her son’s father—assuming Michael was his father. Assuming Michael wasn’t his father, perfection would have compelled her to introduce the boy to Michael and inform him that he had no ties to the kid. Emmie might not be as imperfect as Michael was, but she was a long way from perfect.
He awaited her with an edgy anticipation. He’d managed to win her ear for a few minutes, and he couldn’t afford to misplay the moment. He needed to keep her attention long enough to apologize, to win her forgiveness, to explain what had happened five years ago...and to find out about the kid, if he could.
Jeffrey.
Surely she would tell him whether Jeffrey was his son if he did a good enough job of explaining himself. That was his only hope: that he would explain what had happened in San Pablo so well she wouldn’t be able to refuse him the truth.
CHAPTER FOUR
San Pablo,
five years earlier
HE COULDN’T HELP but notice her. She was like a circle of sunlight in a dense forest, bright and beckoning.
He was seated at an outdoor table at a cantina with Max Gallard, sipping a cola and lemon while Gallard guzzled a bottle of cerveza. The main street was Saturday-morning busy—cars, wagons and bicycles competing for road space, mothers browsing in the shops and open-air stalls while their children bobbed and darted among the throngs, looking for goodies to filch. Michael knew what they were up to: he’d spent enough time in San Pablo to have learned the trouble idle children could instigate while their madres dickered over the price of a liter of milk or a sack of rice.
She wasn’t anyone’s mother, though. She looked too young and not nearly tired enough. Her hair hung soft and pale around her face and down past her shoulders. Her complexion reminded him of cream kissed with the golden sweetness of honey.
Gallard was blustering about how the clutch kept slipping on the Jeep he’d rustled up for them to use in San Pablo. Michael tried to remember to nod at the appropriate times, but his gaze was riveted to the slim blond woman down the street as she studied a display of peaches.
“We’ve got to find a mechanic,” Gallard insisted. “Do they even have them in this godforsaken place?”
Michael wanted to retort that San Pablo wasn’t godforsaken. It was too hot for May, and too dusty, and the gnats had a way of dive-bombing people like kamikaze pilots in a World War II movie—but San Pablo also had spicy food in the cantinas and lively music spilling from the open windows. It had clever, if not completely honest, children and strong women and lazy, lolling men filling the tables around him and Gallard, smoking cigarettes and arguing politics. A man could buy a Coke on ice on a steamy spring morning, and he could admire a beautiful woman as she admired peaches half a block away. San Pablo was hardly godforsaken.
“Where there are cars there are mechanics,” he pointed out.
“Because we can’t risk grabbing Cortez and then having our wheels die on us before we can bring him in.”
“I’ll find a mechanic,” Michael promised.
Max Gallard was all business. His brush-cut hair and burly shoulders gave him the appearance of a marine drill sergeant nursing a deep nostalgia for the darkest days of the Vietnam War. In fact, he looked like the role he was playing—a shady gun merchant—much more than Michael looked like a shady gun merchant’s assistant.
Michael looked like what he was: a half Latino, half Anglo guy who taught college courses in political science. He was on the thin side, his hair on the long side, his skin darkly tanned and his apparel campus-cool—faded blue jeans, a white T-shirt and leather sandals with thick, treaded soles. His nose was narrow but too long, his chin blade-sharp, but he’d never wasted time worrying how his features came together. He wondered what a woman like the pretty blonde shopping for peaches would think of him.
He decided to find out. “Look, Max—I’ll find us a mechanic this afternoon. I’ve got other things to do this morning.”
“What other things?” Gallard asked, then twisted in his wrought-iron chair and peered over his shoulder to see what had captured Michael’s attention. He turned back. “Don’t mess with her,” he warned. “We’re here to do a job.”
Michael drained his glass of Coke and stood. “Saying hello to a woman isn’t going to keep me from doing my job.”
“You want to stay focused—”
“I will,” he assured Gallard. “I’ll take care of the clutch, all right?” Before Gallard could delay him with further argument, Michael shoved away from the table and headed down the street toward the woman at the produce stall.
He sidled up to her just as she was handing the clerk a bag of peaches to be weighed. Michael pulled out his wallet and handed the clerk enough money to pay for them. Startled, the woman spun around, and he discovered that she was even more beautiful up close than she’d been from a distance. Her skin was exactly as lovely as he’d thought, smooth and satiny. Her eyes were blue, wide with surprise above the elegant contours of her cheeks. Her loose-fitting cotton dress revealed as much as it concealed, the sleeveless bodice exposing the delicate hollows of her collarbones and the feminine curves of her shoulders, the loose skirt pressing against her long legs whenever a breeze skipped down the street.
“¿Habla inglés?” he asked.
She stared at him for a moment, apparently sizing him up. “Si,” she said, then smiled shyly. “I mean yes.”
“You’re American,” he guessed. Three words of English were enough to tell him that. Three words inflected with a slight Dixie drawl.
“Yes, I am.” Her smile still reserved, she fidgeted with the paper bag, rolling the top down to protect the peaches. “You shouldn’t have paid for these.”
“Why not?” he asked.
Stumped, she smiled again. “Now you’ll expect something in return.”
Not expect, he wanted to explain—but he had hopes. “I’d settle for a peach,” he said, grinning to put her at ease.
Her gaze never moving from his face, she unrolled the top, passed him a plump yellow peach and rolled the top shut again.
He took the fruit in his left hand and extended his right. “Michael Molina,” he introduced himself.
She glanced at his hand, once again seeming to take his measure, and then shook it. Her skin was softer than the peach’s. “Emmie Kenyon,” she said.
He wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “Emily?”
“No, Emmie. Like the letters M-E. For Mary-Elizabeth.”
He liked that—not just that her name was Mary-Elizabeth shortened to Emmie, but that she’d told him. If she’d wanted to blow him off, she wouldn’t have bothered explaining all that.
“What brings you to San Pablo?” he asked, pleased just to be standing next to her, watching the breeze flutter through her hair, inhaling her simple talcum-powder fragrance, wondering whether her eyes could truly be that blue. Maybe she was wearing tinted contact lenses. Or maybe the glaring sun was affecting his vision.
“I’m a teacher,” she said.
“No kidding? So am I.”
“Really?” Her eyes glowed, and he realized that, yes, they truly were that blue. “Are you here with a church group?”
A church group? Hardly. He was here to help Max Gallard capture a gunrunner who had jumped bail and fled from Los Angeles. San Pablo’s convoluted bureaucracy might take years to process an extradition, and the bail bondsman who’d hired Gallard to bring Cortez back didn’t want to wait years, especially given that it would take a lot less time for someone like Cortez to come up with a new identity and get back into the business of supplying deadly weapons to the street gangs of Los Angeles.
But if Emmie Kenyon was with a church group, she could be...pious. Maybe a novitiate or something, too pure and saintly to entertain the erotic kinds of thoughts Michael entertained every time he glimpsed her unearthly blue eyes.
“I’m a college professor back in California,” he said, overstating his position just a bit. He was an assistant professor in his first year on the faculty at Cal-State Northridge, and the odds of his moving into a tenure-track slot were too iffy to bet on. “I’m down here doing research.”
That interested her. “What kind of research?”
“I teach political science. I specialize in Central American political history.”
She chuckled. “There’s plenty of that, I suppose. Politics in this part of the world seems to provoke as much passion as soccer.”
“I think there’s just a bit more bloodshed in soccer,” he joked. Then he braced himself for the worst and asked, “So, are you with a church group?”
“More or less. My parish back home sponsors Americans who come down here and contribute to the society in some way. They’ve got a team building houses, and several nurse practitioners are helping to staff a clinic across town. I came to teach for a year. I’ve got my own class, plus I’m working with the teachers to set up computer classes
for their students. Our church donated a computer to the school, too.”
That sounded noble without being too virtuous. Michael regained his optimism. “You don’t teach on Saturdays, do you?” he asked.
“Not usually.” Her smile lost its reticence. She appeared to find him amusing and harmless. If she was aware of the sharp tug of lust her smile awakened in him, she probably wouldn’t be so amused, nor would she consider him exactly harmless.
“Are you free this evening?”
Her smile changed again, this time taking on a skeptical edge. “I don’t rightly know,” she drawled. “It would depend.”
“On what?”
“On what you’re really asking me.”
It was his turn to smile. For all her delicate beauty, she was no fool—and he was glad, even if her discernment made his life a bit more challenging. “I’m really asking,” he said, “whether you’d like to have dinner with me tonight.”
She contemplated his invitation, her fingers smoothing the paper bag, her gaze drifting past him. A couple of dogs snarled and barked at each other near the cantina where he and Gallard had been talking. Gallard was gone, he noticed when he turned to watch the sparring mutts. Someone shooed them away from the tables and they scampered down the street, dodging bicycles and a wheezing bus.
Emmie turned back to him. “I’m staying as a guest in a private house,” she told him. “I don’t think my hosts would be pleased if I had a man calling for me there. So perhaps we’d better meet somewhere.”
There were no elegant restaurants in San Pablo. This was a third-rate town in a third-rate country; if anyone was rich here, it was due to illegal activity, and he’d know better than to flaunt his ill-gotten wealth. But there were cozy hosterias scattered about, places were the meat was perfectly spiced, the beans perfectly cooked and the rum and beer strong enough to balance the food.
“Do you know Casa Rosita’s?” he asked. “Will you meet me there?”
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