by Arlene James
“I’ve never seen you so enthusiastic. In fact, I’d venture to say that you’re actually happy these days.”
Adam could only shake his head. Did he have it written on his forehead? Life is better than I expected. Or had he been so bitter in the past? “What do you mean, ‘these days’?”
Jake cocked his head as if deciding how much to say. He apparently decided that it was safe to say it all. “You look…whole, Adam. I know Diana’s death shook you up, but I know, too, that you were never happy with Diana. I always figured the military was just your way of escaping your marriage.”
Adam was rocked. “That’s utter nonsense.”
Jake shrugged negligently. “I don’t think so. I know what I’m talking about, son. I know how a man in love looks, how he behaves, what his priorities are. And your marriage was not your priority. Oh, you did everything that Diana expected of you, but neither of you worked very hard at that marriage. I even told Diana once that she shouldn’t let you escape the relationship so easily.”
“And what did Diana say to that?” Adam asked lightly, pretending little interest.
Jake sighed. “Diana said that her life pleased her greatly, that if you were escaping anyone, you were escaping me.”
Adam managed a kind of smile, but his voice was tinged with bitter sadness. “Well, I’m glad she was happy. As for this notion that I was escaping via the military—”
“You don’t have to justify anything on my account,” Jake said roughly. “I was just making a point.”
“That point being…”
“You weren’t in love with Diana, but you’re in love with someone now.”
Adam couldn’t have been more shocked. “Why on earth would you say something that absurd?”
“I told you. I recognize the look.”
Adam arched a skeptical brow. “Oh? How so?”
Jake slid him a quelling look. “Well, because of your mother, of course.”
Adam jumped at the chance to turn the tables. “So you’re in love with Mom? You’ve a funny way of showing it, moving back to Grandmother’s house.”
Jake’s expression was resigned. “My feelings for your mother have nothing to do with my leaving.”
“Then why leave?”
Jake shook his head, looking as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. “I can’t explain it to you, any more than I could explain it to her.”
“You could try.”
Jake seemed to find that almost amusing. “You don’t trust me to do what’s best for everyone any more than she apparently does.”
Adam knew instinctively that the time had come to change the course of his relationship with his father. The words he would have said just yesterday were on the tip of his tongue. He was ready to go, eager for battle, but somehow a new spirit had gradually taken over. Adam didn’t want to fight anymore. He no longer felt compelled to jockey for position. He didn’t want to escape. He just wanted…peace.
Impulsively he reached across the table and grasped his father’s wrist. He sensed somehow that words would not be enough. “I do trust you, Dad,” he said slowly, evenly. “I have no doubt at all that you’ll do what you think best for everyone. I guess that’s what I came here to say, that and…” This was harder to get out than it should have been, but he cleared his crowded throat and went on. “That and I—I love you.”
Jake Fortune looked as if he’d been poleaxed. Then the shock passed and his whole face began to tremble and twitch. He turned his arm beneath Adam’s and returned the grasp with the fervency of a death grip. He shifted in his chair, not once but several times. Gradually he wrestled his emotion into abeyance and retreated into gruffness.
“Of c-course you do! Just as I…love you.” He rushed those last two words out, as if fearing they might get lost on the way. Relieved to have mastered them, he adopted a studied nonchalance, at last releasing Adam’s wrist and waving his hand negligently. “That was never in question.” He ducked his head, fiddling with his napkin and trying not to sniff.
Adam felt a suspicious burning at the backs of his own eyes and a lump rising up in his throat, but he beat down such emotional display and drew a calming breath. “Well,” he said, in a businesslike tone, “now that that’s out of the way, may I stick my nose in far enough to suggest that you go home, or at least call Mom and talk?”
Jake made a face. “I don’t have anything to say to her, Adam. I mean, nothing’s changed.”
“You might tell her what you just told me,” Adam suggested, “and then you might help her plan a reception for Rocky and Luke.” Jake made another face, but Adam pressed him. “Luke deserves an official welcome into the family, Dad, and Rocky deserves our blessing. Besides, I’ve been thinking that this just might be a good opportunity for the family to show the clan at large that our confidence in you hasn’t waned.”
Jake looked long into his son’s eyes. His voice rattled tellingly when he said, “You’d do that for me?”
Adam smiled his brightest. “We all would. I spoke to Caroline about it just the other day. She and Nick are solidly in your corner, and she tells me that Allie is, too. I’m sure Natalie and Rachel feel the same way. And if you think it will help, I’ll even call Aunt Lindsay and Aunt Rebecca, too. It can’t hurt to let them know we expect their support.”
Jake was nodding his head, but his expression remained solemn. “I don’t know that it will make a difference, Adam. Nathaniel’s really got the bit between his teeth this time. But you can’t know how much I appreciate…” His voice broke, and he dropped his gaze, but it wasn’t necessary to say anything more.
Spying the waiter bringing their orders over, Adam shook out his napkin and smoothed it across his lap. “Will you call Mom and tell her the reception’s on, or do you want me to do it?”
“I’ll do it,” Jake said after a long moment, “but, Adam, you’ve got to tell me something. What’s changed you? Where is this new attitude coming from?”
The waiter arrived just then, bowing and scraping and preparing to serve them. Adam felt the oddest urge to look at that veiled woman again. He slid a glance over one shoulder, but the woman’s chair was empty.
Adam shook his head, smiling to himself, and merely said, “Eat your lunch, Dad, and I’ll tell you what your grandchildren have been up to.”
Jake opened his mouth as if to argue, but then he closed it again and nodded. “I’d like that.”
A pleasant half hour passed. When the waiter brought the check, a good-natured wrangle ensued, which Adam—for the first time—actually won. He could tell that it irritated Jake mightily to have his son buy him lunch, but he swallowed his pride and let it go. Adam got up to leave, Jake saying that he would wait for another appointment to appear shortly. At any other time, Adam would have merely nodded and hurried on his way, but he could admit to himself now that his father’s affection was important to him. Uneasy as all get-out, he took the initiative, walking around the table in search of an embrace. He began to think that Jake was not going to cooperate, but at the last moment, Jake shot to his feet and stuck out his hand. Adam grasped that hand, then threw caution to the winds and wrapped his free arm around his father’s broad shoulders, leaning into him for the classic male hug.
When they separated a moment later, Jake seemed to be having a little trouble clearing his throat, but then he looked up and spied his appointment arriving early. To Adam’s surprise, Jake’s self-possession returned in a blink of an eye. His face broke into a smile, and he wrapped his arm around Adam’s shoulders, holding him in place at his side, without the slightest show of discomfort. When his business appointment drew near the table, Jake announced in a hearty voice, “This is my son, Adam. He just bought my lunch!”
The middle-aged man who nodded in acknowledgment of the introduction was a stranger to Adam, but he obviously knew Jake well enough to speak about family, as well as business. He looked Jake in the eye and said, “I envy you. The only thing my son ever bought me was diffi
culty, the spoiled, lazy brat.”
Jake pounded Adam on the back. “Ho, not my boy! This is a military man, retired now and about to bite off a brand-new business career. And you ought to see the kids he’s got—perfect angels!”
Adam started to laugh. “Hardly, but they keep me hopping.”
He withstood another back-pounding and took his leave, feeling light as air. He was working his way through the tables again, grinning from ear to ear, when a funny feeling skittered up his spine. He stopped in his tracks and put a hand to the back of his neck, looking around him in confusion. He spied the woman all in black, standing against the wall behind a huge potted plant. She was wearing a rather large felt hat with a heavy veil attached, totally obscuring her face and hair, and yet Adam felt a definite tingle of familiarity. She seemed to be weeping. The white handkerchief clutched in her black-gloved hand made frequent trips beneath the heavy veil. He couldn’t help staring, but when she stiffened, he saw that he was making her uncomfortable and moved on. If anyone understood grief, it was him. It was only as he nodded at the maître d’ on his way out that he realized who that woman reminded him of. Something about her, the way she held herself, the way she moved her hands, was just like Kate.
Kate. He shook his head. In addition to softhearted, he was getting softheaded in his dotage. Must be an effect of civilian life. Or maybe it was just that Kate would have been pleased by what had gone on here today. In a way, she had started it all with those photo albums. He hoped she knew how it was all turning out. He hoped she was looking down on them, watching and approving, pleased that her legacy of love was outliving her. God willing, it would outlive them all.
Laura was on pins and needles. Adam’s lunch with his father must have lasted well over two hours, and then there was the travel to the city and back and… Even at a distance she recognized the sound of the garage door opening—one of the rollers had started to screech annoyingly—and she couldn’t bear to wait patiently for Adam to make his way back to the den. With the boys down for naps and Wendy engrossed in a picture book, Laura could not make herself keep her seat. She popped up and all but ran down the hall, arriving in the foyer at the very moment Adam opened the door from the garage. His face lit up at the sight of her.
“Can’t wait to find out the results of your meddling, eh?”
Laura let her weight roll back onto her heels and defended herself. “I didn’t meddle! I simply made a suggestion—one your mother agreed with, I might point out. It was a most reasonable suggestion, too. You even thought so at the time.”
He had shrugged out of his coat and was stowing it in the closet. “I still do.”
“Oh?”
“Mmm-hmm…”
“Well, then…”
He shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Well, what?”
Laura stomped a foot, shaking her hands as if to hurry him. “Adam! How did it go?”
To her consternation, Adam poked his head into the hallway and looked first in one direction, then the other. Apparently satisfied, he drew into the foyer, rubbing his hands together as if in anticipation. Laura put her hands to her hips, out of patience, but before she could admonish him again, Adam reached out, hooked a hand in the bend of her elbow and jerked her to him, his arm wrapping around her waist as she collided with his chest. “You were right,” he said smoothly, bringing up his free hand to grasp her chin and tilt it. “It went wonderfully. Thank you.”
Laura blew out a gust of breath, aware suddenly of how her breasts were flattened against his chest. “Uh, I’m awfully glad everything worked out, Adam. Somehow I knew—”
“Oh, shut up,” he said, grinning as his mouth descended to hers. The grin faded as their lips melded.
Laura knew that she ought to push away, but for the life of her, she couldn’t seem to manage it. Her hands came up to his chest, then kept right on going until they had circled his neck and invaded the bristly hair at the back of his head. She felt him shift his weight, widening his stance as his hand slid down to her bottom, pressing her against him, and in short order she felt his lengthening hardness against her middle. Oh, what she wouldn’t give…
Adam seemed to be on the same wave-length. He moaned in frustration, even as he thrust his tongue into her mouth and flexed his lower body against her.
“Daddy?”
Reeking with censure, that little voice cut the mood as nothing else could have. Adam and Laura exploded apart, reeling in opposite directions. Laura recoiled with such force that she bounced off the wall, and Adam had to reach out and grab her wrist to steady her. Wendy folded her arms and tapped her foot impatiently.
“Daddy, what are you doing to Laura?” she demanded with little-girl sternness.
Adam sent a look at Laura. He was smiling, a devilish glint in his golden eyes.
“Adam, don’t you dare!”
He ignored her and bent at the waist, bringing his face level with his daughter’s. “I’m kissing her,” he said flatly. Then, straightening, he gave Laura’s arm a yank. She yelped and stumbled against him. He wrapped both arms around her and planted a solid kiss on her mouth before switching his gaze back to Wendy. “And doing a very good job of it, too. Now go away.”
To Laura’s everlasting amazement, Wendy shrugged her little shoulders and grinned. “Okay!” She skipped away, singing.
Adam put his head back and laughed. “I think she approves,” he said to a stunned Laura. Before she could get her mouth closed, he covered it with his, using his tongue and lips to manipulate the fit and seduce her into compliance.
Laura let herself relax against him, her hands sliding up and around his neck, but she could not so easily quell the alarm bells ringing inside her head. She made an effort to pull away.
“Adam. Adam, we shouldn’t. Soon I’ll have—”
He seized her by the upper arms and shook her, just once. “Don’t! Not now. Just let me be happy. For God’s sake, just once, let me be happy!”
Not even the firmest resolve could have withstood that plea, and Laura’s resolve was not very firm. She lifted a hand to his face, her eyes roaming over it with hot pleasure until she came to his mouth. With a groan, he brought her hard against him once more and engaged the kiss with such poignancy that the alarm bells effectively stilled. For the first time in…it felt like forever…the fear left her. She hugged him tight, letting passion take her where it would for once, knowing that it wouldn’t take her too far…yet. But perhaps it took her further than she realized, for a thought never before dared began to form. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to go, after all. Doyal didn’t have to find her. Perhaps he had even tired of looking. She could be giving up everything she’d ever wanted by leaving here, and for nothing. How could she give up Adam and the children for the mere possibility that Doyal might find her? How could she ever give them up?
Eleven
“Hello, darlings!” Erica paused in the dining room door and smiled down on her grandchildren. She looked small and elegant standing there, her upswept hair glowing with streaks of silver at her temples. Her classical features were as composed and serene as usual, but Laura sensed a barely leashed excitement behind those shining green eyes.
Amused—everything seemed to amuse him lately—Adam stood and lifted an arm in welcome, indicating a chair on the near side of the table. “Would you care to join us for dinner, Mother?”
Erica glanced around the table as if enjoying the sight of the family at dinner, but she shook her head. “No, thank you, dear. I only came to let you know that our little plan worked. Your father has agreed to the reception.”
Adam’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, I know.”
Erica turned her bright gaze on Laura. “And I wanted to thank you, Laura.”
Laura was a little confused. She hadn’t done anything. “For what, exactly?”
Erica smiled, her rather exotic gaze sliding to her son. “Oh, for a great deal, actually.” Her attention snapped back to Laura. “But especially for convincing my son to make peace
with his father.” Her gaze shifted to Adam again. “I’ve never seen him so…emotional. You’ve helped him a great deal.”
Adam bowed his head, clearing his throat. “Yes, well, he does seem to be…softening in his middle years.”
Erica put her head back and laughed, the husky sound one of potent knowledge. “We won’t tell him that you said so!”
Adam chuckled. “No, perhaps we’d better not.”
Erica brought her hands together in a graceful gesture that signaled a change of subject. “Now, about the reception… I’m thinking that an island theme would dispel some of the winter gloom. Your father suggested barbecue, God help us—or, worse yet, chuck wagon! I reminded him that Luke is a doctor, a physician, however he may display his heritage. But of all the family, Adam, only you know Luke well enough to advise me. What do you think?”
Adam shrugged. “I don’t think it makes any difference, Mother. Luke’s just a man with a colorful heritage and a deep sense of responsibility. Frankly, I think he’s going to be rather uncomfortable no matter what you serve.”
“I see.” Erica bit her lip thoughtfully. “Well, perhaps I’d better stick to hors d’oeuvres, then. Nothing too ostentatious, of course.”
“Well, if I know you,” Adam said, drawing her near to kiss the top of her head, “it will be a very elegant affair.”
“Elegant but relaxed,” Erica promised. “Now sit down and eat your dinner. I just want to hug my grandchildren before I go.”
Adam escorted her around the end of the table, then took his seat, spreading his napkin across his lap while his mother floated down to wrap her arms around a giggling Ryan. “Mmm-hmm… How is Grandmommy’s little man?” Ryan twisted in his seat to give her a prim kiss, his little mouth puckered tightly. Erica chuckled and patted and moved on to Robbie, whom she called her “darling mischief-maker.” He made her work for her hug and kiss, but not too hard, and his eyes were sparkling with delight the whole time. Wendy got up on her knees and turned around in her seat in anticipation. Her hug included a whisper in her grandmother’s ear. A sleek blond brow lifted in response as Erica’s gaze slid between Adam and Laura. “Oh, he did, did he?” then she gave that throaty chuckle again and whispered something in her grand-daughter’s ear.