The Secret Father (The Calvert Cousins 1)

by Anna Adams

  “Huh?”

  She searched him for broken bones, already realizing she’d overreacted, already embarrassed to meet Zach’s gaze.

  “Mom, you’re tickling me.” Evan pushed her away and then lifted a small, wooden whistle. “Look what Dad gave me.”

  That was it? She sat back on her heels, her heart beating at the walls of her chest, her blood so heavy in her head she felt like fainting. All that scare—complete with Sherm the deputy letting her know he’d scattered both Zach’s friends and the “mob” of reporters—and “Look what Dad gave me” was all Evan cared about?

  “That’s nice.” She licked her dry lips. “What is it?”

  He blew it, and she fell backward onto the driveway. “Is that a bird call?”

  “Yeah—for turkeys.”

  “And I gotta train whistle.” Lily piped up behind her just before the whistle shrilled.

  Olivia barely managed not to cover her ears. She’d hate to insult the children. “Wow, Lily. That sounds just like a real train.”

  “Come on, let’s not deafen Olivia.”

  Zach held out his hand, and Olivia stared at his broad palm. Even the lines were familiar. She put her hand in his, though she was perfectly capable of dragging her own behind off the dirt.

  Zach hauled her into the air with impressively little effort. “Can you hear me?” he asked.

  She laughed, glancing down at Lily and Evan. “I guess they’re all right.”

  “Mr. Henderson helped us,” Evan said.

  “Maybe we should go inside.” Beth spun Lily toward the porch.

  “No, Mom.” Zach let go of Olivia to take his mother’s arm. Olivia’s hand felt cold, and she tucked it into her back pocket. Zach went on. “We’ll wait to see if any other cars come along, and then we’ll head to my house. I need to let Helene know what happened in case anyone uses the pictures they took.”

  “You can call from inside.”

  “I just want to make sure we don’t have to deal with them again tonight, Mom.” He bent a meaningful look toward Evan and Lily. “It was kind of scary.”

  “I thought so, too, Daddy.” Lily held out her arms for him to lift her and ducked her head against his shoulder.

  Guilt dropped heavily on Olivia. “I’m sorry. Maybe we should have stayed in Chicago. I did call my father and ask him if he could do something. He said he’d look into it.”

  Zach frowned. “What can he do?”

  “He’s bigger than any of the other guys.” Olivia didn’t enjoy talking about her family’s influence. She’d always avoided using Kendall power—maybe she’d even tried to convince herself it didn’t exist, and she and Evan were just like any other mom and son. But now, if he and Lily were going to be camera targets, she’d set her father on anyone who tried to harm the children.

  “Doesn’t that make him vulnerable? Don’t the other ‘guys’ want to beat him?” Zach asked.

  “Dad has this theory. Give the others a little of what they want—photos, or the press conference, and they won’t be ambitious enough to go for more than you want to give. That’s never been the way he worked, so I don’t know why he thinks it’s effective, but that’s the way he manages the competition, too. He can’t put everyone out of business, so he makes a little room for them, the stories, the territories he deems expendable. He has more resources, so he always looks better.”

  Zach also seemed to doubt the process her father had perfected for getting his own way. He checked his watch. “We’ve waited long enough. I’m going to put you back in the car now, Lily. Evan, do you want to ride with me or your mom?”

  Evan’s sigh was a heavy gust of wind. “I’d better go with Mom. She might need me.”

  Olivia was taken aback. “I’m perfectly fine, son. Ride with your dad if you want to.”

  “Okay.” He scampered around her and climbed in beside Lily.

  Olivia watched, nonplussed to take a back seat in her son’s priorities. She thought she’d steeled herself. She was the adult. She possessed a sound mind.

  She still wanted her son to pick her first. Which no doubt made this a desirable lesson in character building.

  “I’ll back up over there.” She pointed to the far corner of Beth’s driveway. “And then follow you down.”

  “Sounds good,” Zach said. “Go slowly because I’m going to ease out after I make sure no one’s waiting for us.”

  She nodded and then turned to his mom. “Thanks, Beth, for letting us meet here.”

  “I’d rather you stayed awhile,” she said, in the way of a grandmother, “but I understand, Zach.” She forestalled her son’s explanations and then leaned into the back seat of his car. “Evan, Lily, I’ll see you at the orchard on Friday.”

  Evan stopped inspecting his turkey call. “Orchard?” Excitement perked him up.

  “For Grandma Greta’s party,” Beth said. “You can pick apples.”

  “On a ladder?” Lily bounced in her seat, forgetting her earlier scare.

  “We’ll have to see about that.” Zach’s reluctance boded ill for Lily and ladder-climbing. “Ready, Olivia?”

  “Sure.” She crunched through the gravel, then backed Eliza’s car away from his. She tried her father’s cell phone, but received no answer. With any luck, he’d be busy working his evil magic on their behalf this time.

  She dropped her phone back in her purse and concentrated on following Zach. They rolled slowly down his mother’s driveway, entering the highway only after he made sure no one was waiting for them.

  He turned north and they began to meander up the ridge on narrow roads. Zach would have to lead her out of here when she and Evan started back to the bed-and-breakfast tonight. She’d never find her way back to town unless Bardill’s Ridge glowed as brightly as Chicago.

  Finally they turned down a paved driveway that turned into small pebbles in front of a white farmhouse. Dark green shutters and empty window boxes bordered the upstairs window. A tall porch wrapped around the lower floor.

  Olivia imagined colorful plants in the window boxes and in the flower beds that Zach had left barren. She saw Evan and Lily and maybe a couple more children swinging off the porch rail to land on the run in the neatly mowed lawn.

  Those nebulous, faceless children brought her up short. Imagining him with Helene hurt, no matter how deeply she didn’t want to care. But it was far too easy to imagine him with someone else—someone who could make him happy, settle him down where she and Helene had failed to make him care enough to stay.

  Heat filled her face. Talk about a fine time to panic, with reporters all over the hills, and her son falling under the spell of his brand-new father. It’d be a better time to remember this was almost exactly what she’d wanted six years ago, two parents for her son, and Zach, safe and sound.

  She parked the car behind Zach’s and cleared all dangerous thoughts from her mind as she joined the others. Zach got out of his car, but Evan and Lily stayed in their seats. Olivia leaned in.

  “Not coming out?” she asked.

  “We’re driving to the barn to unload the stuff we bought at Henderson’s.” Zach took a key off his chain and handed it to her. “Go inside. Check out the fridge. Get a drink. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Where’s the barn? I don’t know that I want Evan out of my sight any longer today.”

  “I didn’t think of that.” He led her to the rear of his car. “See that road?” A continuation of the pebbled drive, it wound around the house. “It leads to the barn. You can see it from the kitchen.” He held out the key. “Or you can come with us.”

  She hesitated. She would have gone if he’d asked her. It was silly, but in her present, uncertain state, the invitation mattered.

  “Okay. I’ll see you later. Watch him. Evan hasn’t been in a real barn before.”

  He dropped the key in her hand. “He’s been in a fake barn?”

  “At a petting zoo. I don’t know if it was real.”

  As Zach looked bemused,
a train whistle blasted the air. A turkey called in response.

  “I’d better go before they hurt themselves.”

  Shouldering her bag, she stepped back as he started the car again. She climbed the porch steps, listening to his engine fade. A gust of wind blew her hair into her eyes and her mouth and a shiver ran up and down her body. Under the covered veranda, she wished she’d brought a jacket.

  She put the key to the door. This was Zach’s home. She hadn’t walked into a fairy tale where everything was going to end all right and they’d find the love they’d lost. She’d loved. He’d been careful not to tell her too much about himself.

  She’d quizzed him about every family member in every picture he’d kept. She’d needed more than he could give, and she’d searched for more information every way possible.

  With those past interrogations in mind, she couldn’t seem to turn his key in the front door lock now. Going inside without him would feel like snooping. She no longer snooped—except at work.

  Smiling wryly, she dropped into a rocker beneath a wide picture window. She tucked her collar close beneath her chin and rocked slowly.

  The view took her breath away. Straight ahead, beyond the line of spruce that blocked Zach’s property from the road, the ridge continued to climb. The trees looked as if someone had picked up a bucket full of autumn and painted the ultimate fall landscape. To the east a glimpse of the courthouse cupola, and the church’s spire peeked above more forest.

  The Calverts who’d lived in this home must have felt like kings. As Olivia turned her head, the low brush of wind rustled in her ears. Nothing could have been more different from the museum she’d grown up in or the decidedly contemporary city dwelling in which she raised her son.

  She felt good rocking on Zach’s porch. This land accepted anyone, enfolded even a lonely woman in ancient, rugged beauty. Her name and her bank account meant nothing here.

  The door opened behind her, and she bolted upright, a scream on her lips. Zach came outside, his eyes questioning her.

  “What are you doing?”

  She stood. “Rocking.” Thinking. Being. Something she hadn’t done a lot of lately in Chicago. “When did you move to this house?”

  “I lived here until my father died. My mom hated the farm for taking him from her, so we moved to her family’s home.”

  “How old were you?” He would have avoided that question in Chicago. It was too specific, and if she’d had unpleasant intentions, she could have used the information to work out the kind of man who grew out of a boy who’d lost his father so young.

  “He died about a week after my eighth birthday.”

  “You tried to become the man of the house. You took care of your mother.”

  “When she’d let me.” He trailed the backs of his fingertips across her cheek, and it didn’t seem like an inappropriate gesture. She had to stop herself from leaning into his hand. “You look cold.” He retained a talent for fending off personal questions. “Come inside, and I’ll start a fire.”

  “Where are Evan and Lily?”

  “Scattering food in the back.” He held the door wider. “Want some coffee? Something to eat?”

  “I’m fine.” He still wanted to take care of people, but he didn’t want more. Though the sound of his voice double-timed her heartbeat, she couldn’t let herself forget they had a son who needed them to be natural together, not attracted.

  She tucked her purse between Zach’s body and hers. Still, she couldn’t avoid his heat against her uncovered hand. Crossing the threshold in the long, lean shelter of his body, she resisted confusing urges. She wanted to run, to keep herself from caring again. But she wanted to stay, to play make-believe again, because make-believe with Zach had been so much better than aching for him after he’d gone.

  She no longer trusted her memories, the hard, hot texture of his thigh beneath her hand, the strain of his flat belly against hers as he’d gulped air. For him, those times had just been sex.

  Tripping on a Berber rug brought Olivia back to the here and now as she slid across the polished pine floor. Zach reached for her, but she evaded his touch.

  “I must be colder than I thought.” Cold explained the low pitch of her voice, too. If Zach was gullible enough to believe her.

  “Come to the kitchen. I’ll make coffee. You shouldn’t have waited on the porch, Olivia.”

  She doubted he was gullible. But now wasn’t the time to discuss feelings and his compulsion to protect gave him a to-do list to make her comfortable. She went along with it.

  The wide farmhouse kitchen held a table for six in its center. Six. But one man lived alone here.

  Zach took coffee from a cabinet and set it on the butcher-block counter. As Olivia drew closer to the square kitchen window, she heard laughter. Lily.

  Olivia leaned across the sink. Outside, Evan ran across the sloping lawn, a blue plastic bucket in his hand. Chasing behind him, Lily threw as much animal food at him as she scattered on the grass. As they reached the edge of the woods, they slowed, to spread the feed with more care.

  “Evan’s hoping he can persuade a deer to live here.” Zach spooned coffee into the filter. “He’d really like a pet.”

  “I know, but we’re so busy I’ve never been sure we could take care of an animal. We had a fish when he was a baby.” She pushed back from the window. “But I don’t like to talk about that.”

  Zach’s mouth curved. Even from the side, his smile softened features that were tighter than she remembered. The years between them hadn’t made him happy either.

  Olivia shifted away from him to the end of the counter, pretending she needed to look through the square-paned windows in the kitchen door.

  “You have a deck.” Two stories of deck, open to the clouds streaming over the ridge and to the breeze that was picking up in the swaying pine boughs.

  She pressed her forehead to the door’s cold glass. A gas grill stood near the kitchen. On the lower level, a dark green table and cream-padded chairs waited for company.

  “My uncle Ethan and I redid it this summer.”

  “Ethan? He’s—Sophie’s father?”

  He looked up, surprise widening his eyes. Her heart started bumping instead of beating. “How did you remember?”

  She almost looked away, but why give in to a challenge? “Remembering is my job.”

  He lifted his head, his gaze careful. “So it is.” He turned back to the coffeepot, but nodded toward the window. “Did they run out yet?”

  “The buckets may be empty, but they look happy. Evan’s chasing Lily now.”

  “You and he should stay here tonight.”

  Had she just imagined an invitation? She turned her head. Her hair tickled beneath her chin, raising a shiver.

  “The reporters can’t find you.” Zach took two cups out of the cupboard. “If they knew where I lived, they’d be here already. No one in town is going to give us up, and if they can find my land in the courthouse records, I’ll hire every last one of them as investigators.”

  “Kendalls don’t hide out.”

  “Maybe this Kendall should, if hiding means Evan and Lily get to know each other without cameras chasing them around the yard.”

  “They’re going to find us here, Zach.” And she didn’t want to stay. She didn’t belong here. It was too simple, too homey, too much the kind of place she’d tried and failed to make for Evan. Being in Zach’s house unnerved her, not least of all because she didn’t know how to build a home like his.

  “I promise you no one will find us. If I can’t find Buford Taylor’s family still, and I grew up in these woods, no outsider is going to find a house that isn’t even listed in the phone book.”

  “I don’t want to confuse Evan.”

  Zach pulled cream from the fridge, but she thought his shoulders stiffened. “Confuse him?”

  “He might start to see the three of us together as a family. I could let him stay if you want.” As much as she hated the idea. What if Evan
loved this home better than his own?

  “If you leave, someone may see where you’ve come from.”

  “That’s not likely, Zach.”

  “Those reporters are your colleagues. You know how resourceful they are. We got away without being caught this time.”

  “I didn’t bring any extra clothes.”

  “I can lend you something. Sweats and a T-shirt to sleep in. Evan can borrow one of my shirts, too.”

  She pressed her forehead into her palm. A headache had begun to build back there. She pushed her fingertips into her hairline. What should she do?

  Flee any dwelling where being alone with Zach felt so right? She let her hands fall to her sides. Zach lifted both brows, waiting for an answer. She couldn’t give in and say the words, so she unzipped her purse and plucked out a plastic bag that held shorts and a T-shirt and underwear for Evan.

  She set the bag carefully on the counter. Zach picked it up. The plastic crackled in his fingers as he twisted it for a closer inspection of the contents.

  “I know you didn’t plan to stay.” He stared, trying to read her mind.

  At twenty-one, she would have bared herself gladly, soul and all. Now she knew better.

  “Evan is five. I’m his mom. He often needs a change of clothes.”

  “Good idea. I’ll have to remember that for Lily. I don’t know how many ice-cream cones she’s worn home.”

  “We should call them in now.”

  “Also a good idea. I didn’t expect you to let Evan stay with me so soon, so I don’t have his room ready yet.”

  She glanced toward the living room through which they’d entered. The last thing she wanted to do was help him clear a room and get it ready for her son. Working together would stick in her head for the rest of her life.

  “Does your couch fold out? Evan and I can share.”

  He nodded. “Why don’t you share my room, and I’ll take the couch.” She started to say no. Zach lifted his hand to rebuff her arguments. “My way is the most sensible. And you’d want more privacy than you’d get on the couch.”

  “I meant to say thanks.” Clearly she hadn’t, but a peace offering might ease them back into more neutral territory.