by Robin Wells
“Yeah, I hear it’s really tough work, lying on the beach with Kirsten Dunst,” she said dryly. She immediately regretted letting him know she’d seen the tabloid stories. She didn’t want him to think she’d deliberately followed his activities.
Zack grinned. “That whole Hollywood scene looks like a lot more fun than it is.”
“I’ll bet.”
“And I’ll raise you a hundred.”
She felt like she’d gotten sucked into a time warp. He’d said the same thing that summer, every time she’d used the familiar figure of speech. Her usual response had been, “You’re on.”
Well, he wasn’t on. Not anymore. She wasn’t interested in playing games with him—word-wise or any other wise. She reached for a container of creamer. “I forgot I’m talking to a professional gambler.”
“Actually, I’m not playing professionally anymore.”
“Oh, no? Have a run of bad luck?”
Zack took a sip of coffee. “You know I never believed in luck.”
Yeah, she did. He’d explained the complex system of card counting he used, based on some higher math formula she’d never fully grasped. “I figured Winning Strategies, Incorporated, was just some kind of tax shelter. It’s a real company?”
He nodded. “It’s a risk-management consulting firm. Companies hire us to figure out the statistical odds of business ventures. We try to come up with all possible scenarios and calculate the chances of each one occurring.”
“So you’re still playing the odds, huh?”
“Pretty much.” His mouth curved into a grin.
It was weird, sitting across from him, getting zapped by that megawatt smile. It stirred up all kinds of old warm feelings. It was just emotional déjà vu, though. She couldn’t genuinely be harboring feelings for someone she didn’t know, and she no longer knew Zack at all.
Not that she’d ever really known him. She couldn’t have. The Zack she’d thought she’d known never would have dumped her the night after they’d shared the most intimate experience two people could share.
He set down his mug and leaned forward. “I read about your husband. I’m so sorry.”
The mention of Paul jolted her. “How did you find out about that?”
“I googled you.”
She turned her wedding-ring set on her finger, aligning the solitaire over the simple gold band. “When?”
“The first time was years ago,” he admitted. “I saw your wedding announcement in the Chartreuse Gazette, and I figured… Well, you’d been married about a month, and I figured you wouldn’t want to hear from me.”
She tried to imagine how she would have reacted to a call from Zack at that point, and couldn’t.
He looked down at his coffee cup. “I googled you every now and then through the years, then again last week.” He looked up, his eyes blue pools of sympathy. “I’m really sorry for your loss.”
Katie poured creamer into her cup and watched it spread through the dark liquid, lightening it, wishing her thoughts would do the same in her head. Was that why he was here now? Because he’d just learned that she was a widow? Why would that matter to him? Did he think they’d pick up where they left off? That made no sense. He hadn’t wanted to be with her then, so he wasn’t likely to want to be with her now.
“From what I read, he was a helluva guy,” Zack said.
Yeah, and she had the posthumous Medal of Honor to prove it. Paul had tackled a suicide bomber in Baghdad and saved the lives of four troops and several civilians.
Her reaction had been considerably less heroic. For months she’d burned with anger. Why hadn’t he saved himself? Why had he put strangers ahead of her? Hadn’t he thought about their future, about the family they’d planned? It had taken her a long while to work her way toward acceptance. The truth had slowly taken root and grown within her: Paul wouldn’t have been the man she loved if he’d saved himself and left other people to die. He would have come home broken in spirit, which would have left him more dead than he was now.
“He was the best,” Katie murmured.
“You deserved the best.”
“Funny,” she bit out before she could stop herself. “You didn’t used to think so.”
“I always thought so.”
“Is that why you left?”
He blew out a sigh and leaned forward, his forearms on the table. “Katie, I feel really bad about the way we ended things.”
She jerked her head up. “We didn’t end things. You left. Without a word, I might add.”
“That wasn’t my idea.”
“Oh, no? Whose idea was it? Your girlfriend’s?”
“I didn’t have a girlfriend.”
“What?” He’d told her he had a girlfriend in Chicago. All summer, she’d been jealous of the girl with the prior claim on Zack’s heart.
“I didn’t have a girlfriend,” he said again. “I made that up so we wouldn’t get involved.”
She stared at him.
“You were the kind of girl who took relationships seriously, and I wasn’t a relationship kind of guy. With your mother’s situation and all, I was trying to protect you.”
Her mother’s “situation” was that she’d been the town skank. Katie had told Zack all about how her mother’s nonstop partying had made her childhood a living hell. “Protect me from what?”
“From me, I guess.” He took a sip of coffee. “I figured that if you thought I had a girlfriend, it’d make it easier to keep things platonic.”
Katie glared at him. How dare he paint himself as some kind of teenage Dudley Do-Right? It took two to tango. “You didn’t seem too interested in keeping things platonic that night on the boat.”
He shifted his weight on the chair. “The truth is, my feelings about you were never really platonic.”
A jolt of shock shot through her. He was admitting he’d had the hots for her?
“I tried to keep a lid on things, but that night…” His blue gaze locked on hers. “That night I just lost it. I’m sorry, Kate. It was never my intention to hurt you.”
“So leaving the next day without so much as a ‘So long, nice knowing you’ was your way of not hurting me?”
He dropped his eyes to his coffee cup. “I need to explain that.”
“Please do.” She folded her arms across her chest and stared at him, her body language telegraphing, This should be good.
“Kate… after I drove you home, I went to pick up my cousin in Lacombe.”
His cousin, Bruce, had lost his driver’s license for a year—he’d seriously injured a woman while driving drunk during spring break in Florida, too far away from Chartreuse for his daddy’s influence to get him off scot-free—so Zack had been his designated driver for the summer. It was a good thing Zack was chauffeuring him around, because Bruce spent every night getting stoned and smashed.
“As usual, Bruce was totally wasted; he spilled a beer in the car and it got all over everything, making my car smell like a brewery. And then I was stopped by a highway patrolman on the way home.”
“Should have been no problem, with your uncle’s connections.”
“This was a state trooper, not a Chartreuse policeman. And it turns out I’d played poker with him earlier in the week. He was mad as hell when he saw my ID and realized a seventeen-year-old had taken him for most of his paycheck.”
Zack paused and leaned forward. “The next thing I knew, he’d clinked a set of cuffs on me and called for backup, claiming I tried to assault him—which was a total lie. To make a bad situation worse, Bruce had stashed a bag of pot under the seat while I was talking to the cop.”
She could believe it. Bruce had been a total pothead.
“We were both arrested, but only I was charged. My uncle had enough influence to keep our names out of the paper and get me tried as a minor, but I had to spend four months at juvie.” He sat back. “I wanted to call you, but I couldn’t.”
“You could have written.”
“Yeah, I could have.” He ran a h
and down his face. “But, Kate—I knew I wasn’t any good for you. I was going to leave at the end of the summer anyway, and I didn’t see any point in leading you on. I figured the best thing I could do for you was to just stay out of your life.”
“It was a little late for that decision.”
“I know.” Zack pulled a piece of folded looseleaf paper from his back pocket. It crinkled loudly as his large hands unfolded it and flattened it on the table. “Kate—I ran across something of yours.” He turned the paper around and slid it in front of her.
She stared down at her own handwriting. It was written when she was much younger, back when she made circles for dots and formed her letters with fat, round loops, but it was her handwriting all the same.
Her heart faltered, then thundered in her chest. She knew what it was even before she read it.
To my baby’s adopting parents:
I know I’m not supposed to have any contact with you, but I couldn’t let Grace go without leaving you a note. If you’re reading this, I guess you found it in the lining of the diaper bag. Please please please love Grace and take good care of her! When she’s old enough to understand that she’s adopted, tell her that I love her with all my heart, but I can’t give her the kind of home she needs.
I know this is a closed adoption, but if she ever wants to know who her parents are and you decide to tell her, my name is Katie Anne Landers, and I’m from Chartreuse, Louisiana. Her father’s name is Zachary Gage Ferguson. He’s from Chicago, and he doesn’t know about the baby.
Please love her and take good care of her and give her the good kind of life she deserves.
Sincerely,
Katie Landers
The room felt like it was spinning. “What… how… who…” She stared at Zack, her mouth dry. “Who gave this to you?”
A voice sounded behind her chair. “I did, Momzilla.”
• • •
Zack looked up to see a teenage girl with a nose piercing, spiky black-and-blue hair, and an angry scowl slouching behind Katie’s back. His heart sank. This was not going as he’d planned. “Gracie, I asked you to wait until I called you.”
The girl lifted her shoulders and adjusted her enormous macramé purse over her stomach. “I got tired of waiting.”
He glanced at Katie. She’d twisted around in her chair and was staring at Gracie with eyes the size of the coffee mugs, her face Moo-Cow Creamer white. A round of tangled emotions shot through him, sharper than physical pain, the same acute emotions he’d felt when he’d first seen Katie at the salon. He’d known that seeing her again would be hard. He’d expected to feel remorse and guilt, and he’d been prepared for a flare-up of the anger that had been simmering in his gut ever since he’d found out about Gracie.
What he hadn’t counted on feeling, damn it, was attraction. He’d thought he’d be immune to Katie by now, but she still pushed all his buttons. He could still remember the first time he’d set eyes on her in that bait shop, her honey-colored hair rioting on her shoulders, her pert, lively face brightening into a smile. Light brown and long lashed, her eyes had crackled with warmth and life and energy.
When those two creeps had walked in and started in on her, he hadn’t been able to stand the way her bright eyes had dimmed. Her whole bearing had changed, as if she were trying to make herself smaller. She’d looked ashamed and cowed and worst of all, resigned, as if she had to endure that kind of thing all the time.
He’d never played the white knight role before, and he liked the way it made him feel. Hell, he just flat-out liked the way Kate made him feel—as if he could do anything, as if he could tell her anything. He’d talked to her until she’d locked up the bait shop for the night, talked as she waited for her mother in the parking lot, talked as he’d driven her home when her mother never showed. He’d continued talking to her every day throughout the long, hot summer. Something about Kate’s big whiskey-colored eyes loosened his lips like hundred-proof bourbon.
He’d told her things he’d never told anyone—about his parents’ screaming matches and accusations, interrupted by the occasional tearful plea for forgiveness and saccharine pronouncements of love. He’d told her about eighty-year-old Mr. Jenkins next door, who’d taught him how to play poker on the afternoons after school when no one was home. He’d told her how he’d figured out a system for counting cards and beating the odds. He’d told her his plan to go to Vegas as soon as he was old enough to legally gamble, where he intended to make a fortune.
Katie hadn’t laughed at him or told him he was crazy. She’d listened and asked him questions and encouraged him to weave his dreams into a plan. She’d believed in him before he’d believed in himself.
And how had he paid her back? By knocking her up, then disappearing without a word. He’d acted like a stupid, callous, insensitive A-hole, turning what should have been a wonderful experience into a painful ordeal.
Judging from the ashen look on her face, he’d just done it again. “I meant to break this to you more gently,” he said apologetically.
Gracie snorted. “Yeah. Having me show up after you thought you were rid of me must be your worst nightmare.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Zack said irritably. Gracie had a real knack for taking words and turning the meaning upside down. But then, she’d turned his whole world upside down the moment she’d walked into it. “I meant it’s a shock. I wanted to prepare her to meet you.”
“Grace?” Katie’s voice came out cracked and low, barely more than a whisper. “You’re my Grace?”
“No. I’m not your anything.” Her voice held a barely reined-in fury. “And it’s Grac—ee. With an i-e. You can call me G-girl. Or just G. But never, ever just Grace.” She glared at Katie across the table. “If you’d stuck around long enough to get to know me, you’d know how badly the name fits me.”
Katie drew back as if the girl had struck her.
Zack rubbed his hand across his jaw. There was no way to make this easy, but Gracie was making it harder than it had to be. From what he’d seen, that was Gracie’s whole approach to life.
Katie, on the other hand, approached life with her arms wide open. He’d known how Katie would react to seeing her daughter again. He’d known she’d want to offer the girl her heart, just as she’d offered it to Zack all those years ago.
And Gracie would crush it, just as he had.
Zack pulled out a chair. “Have a seat, Gracie.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“H-how…,” Katie stuttered. “Wh-when…”
“Let me lay it all out for you.” Despite her earlier words, Gracie plopped into the chair, her enormous macramé bag in her lap. “My adoptive parents died a year and a half ago in a car crash, and I had to go live with my aunt, who’s a total nazi. One day I was going through a box of my parents’ belongings in her attic—the old bat had just stashed their stuff up there like it was garbage! Can you believe it?—and I found that letter.” She gestured toward the paper that lay on the table.
Katie sat stock-still, as if she’d turned to stone.
Gracie blew an unkempt lock of dark hair away from her eyes. “So I googled Zack and learned that he’s this rich poker dude. I figured he owed me for not having to pay child support or anything all these years, and I’m going to need some money for when the baby comes.”
“The—the baby?”
“Yeah. I’m pregnant.” Moving her purse, she rested her hands over her belly. The chipped black nail polish on her bitten-down nails stood out in stark contrast to the white, stretched-out T-shirt covering her small but unmistakable baby bump.
Katie’s jaw dropped. Gracie fixed her with a venomous glare. “Unlike you, I’m not giving my baby away.”
The waitress returned, coffeepot held aloft. She looked at Gracie, then at Katie, then back at Gracie again, her eyes huge. The family resemblance was nothing short of remarkable, Zack realized. Gracie had his blue eyes—the color and shape were identical—but her pert nose, full
lips, and heart-shaped face were the spitting image of her mother’s. He hadn’t needed a DNA test to confirm Gracie’s story, although he’d gotten one anyway.
“Oh, my!” the waitress gasped.
Gracie shot her an angry look and tightened her grip on her belly, apparently thinking the waitress was shocked by her pregnancy. Well, it was pretty shocking, considering that Gracie looked three or four years younger than her seventeen years.
“Can I get you anything, sugar?” the waitress asked.
“Yeah. I’ll have a Coke to go.”
The waitress hesitated a moment. “Are you sure you don’t want milk instead?”
Gracie glared at her. “Did I ask for milk?”
“I just thought…” Gracie’s glower made the waitress abruptly shut her mouth mid-sentence and She mercifully trot away.
“So how… when… why…” Katie tried again to form the words, her eyes locked on Gracie as if she was afraid to blink.
“Why am I here?” She fixed Katie with a hateful stare. “Well, God knows it’s not my idea. You didn’t want to have anything to do with me, and I sure as hell don’t want to have anything to do with you, but the Zack-ster here and my aunt cooked up this lame-assed plan, and I really didn’t have any choice but to go along with it.”
Katie pulled her gaze from Gracie to Zack. Before he could open his mouth to explain, Gracie continued.
“See, my Frankenstein of an aunt said she’d put up a huge legal battle to get me back unless you and Zack share joint custody. She says I need”—she rolled her eyes, made air quotes with her fingers, and raised her voice in a derisive falsetto—“a woman’s influence, at least until the baby’s born and I turn eighteen. So we’re all going to live in this hellhole town for the next four months. After that, Zack will advance me my parents’ life insurance money—they made this stupid trust where I don’t inherit anything until I turn twenty-one—and then my baby and I can go get a life.”
“That part hasn’t been decided,” Zack told her.
The waitress returned with a Styrofoam cup covered with a lid. Gracie picked it up and rose from the chair. “I saw a bookstore down on the corner. I’m gonna go hang out there.” The chair squawked on the green linoleum floor as she shoved it back against the table. Her lip curved into a smirk. “Oh, and Momzilla—better close your mouth before you catch a fly.”