The thought of sharing the third floor with passionate young lovers made her dread even more the prospect of another restless night in the big bed, alone. But she couldn’t dwell on that. It shouldn’t be any different now, here, than it ever was. She was, after all, used to sleeping alone. There had been no lover for her after Noah. Even if she had met somebody she wanted to make love to, she would never have taken another chance of winding up single and pregnant. The only birth control that was fool proof was abstinence.
She knocked lightly on the door of room 6 as she passed and called softly, “The bathroom’s all yours.”
Then, without waiting for a reply, she continued on down the hall, went into her room, and closed and locked the door behind her.
Noah froze at the sound of her voice.
It was Mariel. He would recognize her anywhere.
He had suspected as much, when she had called to him from behind the bathroom door moments earlier.
Actually, he had suspected Mariel was in there when he first climbed the stairs to the third floor, found the bathroom door closed and heard the sound of a shower running. Not that he was certain that it was her, but something had told him it was likely that she inhabited the other third-floor room.
When he had checked in a few minutes ago, he had been told that the rooms on the second floor were larger—suites, with private baths—and that they were all occupied. The old woman had mentioned that there was only one other guest on the third floor, and had added—almost slyly—that the guest was a female.
That meant that Mariel was here alone.
Did it also mean she was still single?
Not necessarily, he realized, as he heard her footsteps retreat down the hall moments before a door closed firmly behind her.
And, he reminded himself, he had no business wondering about her love life, or lack of one. He was here for one reason alone: his daughter was in trouble.
When he couldn’t reach Mariel at the inn, he hadn’t thought twice about driving up here. It had been an automatic response; he couldn’t wait any longer to know what was wrong.
Strasburg was a tiny town, and he knew where Mariel was staying.
At the same inn where he had brought her the night they first made love. A yearning, boyish part of him wanted to think that she had chosen to stay there for sentimental reasons that had something to do with him. But the realistic, jaded man he had become knew better. He remembered Strasburg well enough to know that if one wanted to spend the night there, the choices were fairly limited to the Super 8 and Best Western hotels out on the highway, or the Sweet Briar Inn in the heart of town. There wasn’t much choice involved. The Sweet Briar was quaint and charming, as opposed to the modern concrete lodgings located on the fast-food strip off the Strasburg exit.
After failing to reach Mariel at the inn, he had tossed some clothes into a duffel bag and borrowed his friend Danny’s car, explaining that it was a family emergency. He didn’t go into detail, and Danny didn’t push him—nor was he reluctant to lend Noah the seven-year-old Toyota. Danny was always complaining about having a car in the city—about the hours he wasted each week driving around in search of one of the elusive legal parking spots on the Manhattan streets. Letting Noah have the Toyota for at least the next twenty-four hours meant Danny didn’t have to worry about parking it for a change.
Noah had made the drive up to Strasburg in record time. He knew the roads fairly well, having made the trip countless times back in his college days, and a few times since for alumni weekends and reunions. He had always wanted to bring Kelly with him, but she had begged off every time. She had attended Radcliffe and wasn’t the least bit interested in, as she put it, “sitting around twiddling my thumbs while you’re busy reminiscing with a bunch of washed-up frat boys.”
Maybe Noah’s old buddies were washed-up frat boys. Maybe he was, too. So what? He sometimes thought that he was lucky he had any fond memories of college after the way his freshman year had turned out. He had realized, over that long, desolate summer back in Queens after they had given away their baby and Mariel had gone back home, that he could either let the loss ruin his life, or he could return to Strasburg in the fall and try to make a fresh start. He had opted for the latter and joined a fraternity as a way to meet more people and find a social life. It had been the right thing to do, looking back. Life in the Phi Sig house had been rowdy and frequently hilarious, and it definitely had taken his mind off his troubles.
Now, those troubles had stormed back to haunt him in a way he had never anticipated.
And here he was, knowing that Mariel Rowan was a few yards down the hall, close enough to talk to, if he chose—or to touch. Not that he intended to touch her. Look where that had landed him last time. He didn’t dare allow himself to become captivated by her again, no matter what she was like as a grown woman.
He had no doubt that she was as seductive as ever. How well he remembered what it had been like to entangle his fingers in her long, silky hair, and how right her taut, slender body had felt when he held her in his arms. He could still hear her throaty laugh low in his ear, still feel the weight of her head on his chest when he held her after making love to her.
Forcing the memory out, he grabbed his contact lens kit and headed out the door, shutting it behind him. He hesitated in the hushed hallway a moment, staring at the closed door at the other end of the hall. All was silent behind it. He couldn’t knock. Not now.
He would wait until morning to speak to her. It would be much easier after a good night’s sleep. The drive might have been familiar, but it had still been nearly four hours long and was exhausting. He wasn’t ready to face Mariel again until he had time to grasp the fact that he was really here, about to confront the past he had avoided for so long—and news about his child that would no doubt be unsettling, whatever it was.
He turned and crossed the hall to the bathroom. It was still warm and damp from her shower. He steadied himself against the door frame as he stepped over the threshold, caught off guard by a whiff of the steamy air. If he hadn’t heard her voice calling to him from the hallway minutes ago, this scent, so uniquely hers, would have confirmed that she was here. It was a fresh, herbal fragrance—lotion, or shampoo, or some kind of cologne. He had never known what it was, and he hadn’t smelled it since they had parted; but now here it was.
He stood there for a moment, breathing deeply, lost in the heady scent that carried him back, not to the hard times, but to the sweetest, most intimate times they had shared.
Then, as reality nudged its way back in, he stripped off his sweat-soggy shirt and splashed cold water on his face.
She had forgotten her hairbrush in the bathroom.
Mariel sighed, setting down the toiletries bag she had just searched in vain. She would have to go back down the hall and get it. If she slept on her naturally wavy hair without spraying on conditioner and brushing it out, it would be a mess of snarls by morning.
So much for having the third floor to myself, she thought as she padded barefoot down the hall and found that the bathroom door was closed. She considered knocking, then decided that wouldn’t be polite. She might as well sit on the upholstered hall bench beneath the window at the head of the stairs and wait, hoping that whoever it was wouldn’t be long. The shower had relaxed her, and the strain of the last two days had caught up with her. She was anxious to crawl into bed.
She had barely settled on the bench when she heard the bathroom door start to open. She rose just as the occupant emerged into the hallway a few feet away…
And found herself face-to-face with a shirtless Noah Lyons.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Mariel.”
He heard her name escape his lips as her scent enveloped him, and his eyes took in the incredible sight of her standing before him. She was all bare skin and damp hair and enormous green eyes, and it was all he could do not to sag against the door frame beside him. She was framed by the window behind her, and the moonlight that spilled
in left little to his imagination, rendering her short summer nightgown all but sheer.
She was still slender, still beautiful, yet the angular girlish figure had been replaced by a grown woman’s soft curves: rounded hips and full breasts and the slightest swell of belly where she had carried his child.
With that thought it all came rushing back to him: the shock of her pregnancy, her refusal to marry him and her decision to give up their child, followed by the numbing months waiting for the birth and the inevitable devastation of the aftermath.
Plunked firmly back on earth, Noah found his voice again and said, “I tried to call you back. When I didn’t reach you, I drove up here.”
She nodded. She hadn’t yet spoken, nor had her gaze budged from his face. He reminded himself that she was stunned to see him here, now—even more stunned than he had been to walk out of the bathroom and find her there, scantily clad. He, at least, had known she was under this roof. She had been given no advance warning, no time to prepare.
Or was he assuming too much? Was he wrong to believe that his presence had as soul-searing an effect on her as hers did on him?
Judging by the silence, he was not. He had once known her well enough to have grown accustomed to the look that melded with the shock in her eyes. She was attracted to him. Still. After all these years, after all that had happened, she had feelings for him.
Hope took flight in the vicinity of his heart, only to crash land when a veil dropped over the raw emotion he had glimpsed in her face and she spoke at last. “You didn’t have to come, Noah. I only wanted to talk to you about what had happened, to see if—”
“I didn’t have to come?” he cut in angrily. “Am I any less her parent than you are? For Christ’s sake, Mariel, I’m the one who wanted to keep her.”
Her jaw dropped, and fire flashed in her eyes. “You wanted to keep her at her own expense. You weren’t thinking about what was right for her. You were being selfish.”
“No, Mariel, you were being selfish,” he shot back before he could stop himself.
He hated that he had said it—hated that he still felt that way, after a decade and a half of trying to convince himself that she—that they—had done the right thing. Intellectually, he knew that they couldn’t have kept her, stayed together, raised her. Yet emotionally, he had never given up the sense that he—that they—had abandoned their child. That they hadn’t lived up to their responsibility.
Hell, she hadn’t even considered giving it a shot. She hadn’t been willing to risk what his mother had, alone and pregnant at roughly the same age. His mother, unlike Mariel, hadn’t even had the option of marrying his father; she had valiantly struggled to raise him alone, and she had triumphed.
“So you still hate me after all this time,” Mariel said flatly. “I’m not surprised.”
Well, Noah was. He was shocked at the intensity of the anger that had bubbled so readily to the surface. What was done was done. He had accepted it, put it behind him. Hadn’t he?
Couldn’t he?
He wanted to explain himself, defend himself. But he couldn’t begin to find the right words. All he could say, in as level a tone as hers, was, “What happened to her?”
“She’s disappeared,” Mariel said simply.
“Disappeared?” Countless questions whirled through his mind. He faltered, then uttered the most obvious. “How did you find out?”
She took a deep breath. “It’s a long story. It can wait until morning—”
“No.”
“Noah, it’s late.” She brushed past him without touching him and stepped into the bathroom, retrieving a hairbrush from the sink. He had noticed it when he was there, but hadn’t considered that it might be hers. If he had…
No.
He wasn’t a lovesick schoolboy who would swipe one of her belongings to keep, to treasure. He was a grown man who felt nothing for this woman but deep-seated resentment, and he would do well to remember that.
“We should both get some sleep because this is complicated and I have no idea what we’re getting into,” she continued, pushing past him again, clutching the brush. This time, her hip grazed his thigh, and he was infuriated when he felt his jeans tighten around his arousal at the passing contact.
“Mariel, I didn’t drive four hours in the middle of the night to get some sleep. You were the one who called me. Now tell me what you know.”
She sighed, looking around the hallway and, as if in afterthought, down at her skimpy nightgown. He saw her try to hide behind her arms as she folded them across her breasts, and he felt another stir of desire for her despite his irritation.
“Can we at least go someplace private to talk?” she asked, apparently resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to be rid of him, not even temporarily.
He nodded. “Come into my room.”
“Come into mine.”
Touche, he thought. She was already striding down the hall, and he hurried after her, still carrying his bathroom kit.
She opened the door to her room, and he followed her in, glancing disinterestedly at the blue and white wallpaper, antique furnishings, and open suitcase on the luggage rack. She hadn’t unpacked her clothes, he realized. Either she had only arrived today, or she didn’t intend to stay long.
“Tell me,” he said sternly, closing the door after them.
She was reaching for a terry cloth robe draped over one knob at the foot of the four-poster bed. She pulled it on and swiftly belted it at the waist before turning to face him. “You can sit,” she said, gesturing at the wing chair across from the bed.
“I’ll stand.”
She shrugged, and sat on the edge of the bed, positioning herself so that her back was three-quarters turned to him. He couldn’t see her face as she said, “I got an e-mail a few weeks ago from her.”
“From who?” he asked, even as he realized what she meant. From their daughter. Their daughter had been in touch with Mariel. Jealousy sparked through him, and he fought to hold it back.
“Her name is Amber Steadman now,” Mariel said, brushing her hair as she spoke.
Amber Steadman, he thought. The name was foreign. A stranger’s name. He couldn’t seem to link it to the squirming, dark-haired newborn he had held so briefly that long-ago July day.
“She wrote to me, Noah, asking me if I’m her mother.”
“So this was the first time you’d heard from her?” He walked around the foot of the bed and stood in front of her, needing to look at her. She had stopped brushing, and her head was bent, her hand rubbing her forehead as though she was having a difficult time with this.
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I hadn’t seen or heard anything since that first day—that last day—in the hospital. When they took her away.”
He realized that her voice was choked, and he quelled the urge to say something comforting. It had been her decision to give away their baby. She had to live with the consequences. If it had been up to him—
But it hadn’t been. And he had been through this far too often already in the last few minutes, to say nothing of the last fifteen years.
“So she contacted you by e-mail to see if you were her mother,” he recapped. “And you wrote back to her?”
“No. I couldn’t. Not then. I wanted to wait to see her in person. That’s why I flew here…”
“From where?” he asked, realizing he knew nothing about her life or what had become of her. He couldn’t even begin to guess.
“From Missouri,” she said—one more surprise in a night of surprises.
“You’re living back in Missouri?”
Her laugh was bitter. “Right back in Rockton, where I started.”
“Since when?”
“Since I left here,” she said shortly. “Anyway, I flew here yesterday, and I was planning to go to see her…or maybe call her first. I don’t know what I was planning. I only knew that I couldn’t do this long-distance. And when I got here, I found out by accident—through a newspaper article—that
she’s been missing for over a week.”
Dread seeped in. “She was kidnaped?”
She shrugged, looking up at him for the first time. He was caught off guard by the desolate expression on her face. “The police think she might have run away. Her parents are beside themselves with worry, according to the press.”
Her parents. Yes.
The strangers who had raised her were her parents.
He and Mariel were not.
But it was their long-ago bond that had given her life; their blood ran through her veins. He knew nothing about what had happened to the missing girl after the first precious hours of her life; yet her well-being was suddenly intrinsic to his own, and he knew he wouldn’t rest until he knew she was alive, and safe.
“If she ran away,” he said slowly, pondering what Mariel had told him, “then something was wrong. Maybe something at home.”
Mariel nodded. “I keep wondering if there was abuse, or…”
Noah swallowed hard. The guilt in Mariel’s troubled expression was palpable, and suddenly, he didn’t want to add to it. He wanted to ease her hurt—which was insane, because she was the one who had caused this, and she was the one who had hurt him.
“Who have you spoken to about this?” he asked her, trying to focus on one thing at a time, the important things first. How he felt about Mariel was unimportant now—or so he told himself as he fought the urge to move closer to her. He stood his ground a few feet from the bed, facing her, watching her.
“I haven’t spoken to anyone but you,” Mariel said, running the brush through her damp hair, the bristles getting caught in the tangle of wavy strands. “I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid that if I went to her parents, or to the police, they would somehow think I had something to do with this.”
He wanted to point out that she was doing it again—putting herself first. But he bit back the words.
She went on speaking, asking him if he had heard from Amber.
“Don’t you think I would have told you already if I had?” he asked sharply. “Do you think I’d be sitting here, keeping it to myself?”
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