by Harper Allen
She saw the incomprehension in his eyes and suddenly the guilt and shame that had been dammed up in her for so long spilled over in a corrosive wave.
“You still don’t get it, do you?” she said, her tone rising thinly. “I signed all rights to my daughter away two days before I got married, Max! She’s the most precious thing in my life—and nothing can wipe out the fact that I traded her away before she was even born.”
Chapter Five
He’d been wrong, Max thought grimly.
When he’d met with her in the coffee shop, he’d told himself that Julia had been through hell. He’d assumed that the internal demons that drove her had appeared the day she’d been put behind bars, never to see her child again.
But some part of Julia’s soul had been in torment even when she’d been living as Kenneth’s wife.
And her tough facade had been just that—a facade. She’d reached her breaking point. Even as the thought went through his mind, he saw what little color there had been in her cheeks drain away. With one swift movement he caught her just as her limbs began to crumple.
“I know you don’t like being touched, Julia,” he said shortly as her eyes widened in instant consternation and her body stiffened. “But I don’t like letting women fall face-first onto my kitchen floor.”
“For God’s sake, put me down.” Her lips were still bloodlessly white, but her eyes lasered blue fire at him as he carried her into the living room. “I’m perfectly all right, Max. Put me down.” Her tone was tight with tension.
“You’re not perfectly all right.”
A strand of hair that had escaped the rubber band curved toward the corner of her mouth, and he resisted the insane impulse to stroke it back off her face. He lowered her to the overstuffed sofa and deposited her on it without ceremony.
“Dammit, Julia, do you have to fight me every inch of the way?” he ground out. His own nerves were stretched taut, he realized, disconcerted. The woman was scrawny, prickly, and pretty damn close to a breakdown. So why did he look at her and see delicate, vulnerable and haunted?
He sighed. Pulling up a worn leatherette hassock he sat, leaning forward until his face was only a foot or so away from hers, his forearms braced on his knees and his hands hanging down between them in what he hoped the woman in front of him would take as a non-threatening pose.
“So what was it Tennant had you sign before your marriage?” He saw the light behind those sapphire eyes flare to pained brilliance and then extinguish, leaving her gaze dull and hopeless.
“It was an addendum to the financial agreement I’d signed when our engagement had been announced.” Julia looked down at her hands. Following her glance, Max saw her fold her left palm closed, swiftly hiding the scars on it from his view. She went on, her tone leaden. “It stated Kenneth would have uncontested custody of any child of our marriage if we divorced or separated. I didn’t even think twice about signing it.”
She looked up at him, her expression frozen. “He’d just given me the earrings he wanted me to wear on our wedding day. They were South Sea pearls, perfectly matched, and I told myself they proved he was crazy about me.” Her lips stretched into a smile. “My mother had taught me it was a whole lot easier to fall in love with a rich man than with a poor one, and even though I didn’t love Kenneth, it never occurred to me I’d ever have any reason to leave a man who could afford to buy me presents like that. And since I’d never met a man I couldn’t wrap around my little finger, I couldn’t imagine that his adoration of me was anything less than genuine. So I signed.”
She looked away from him, as if she could no longer meet his gaze. “You were right in your assessment of me, Max. I was spoiled, shallow and vain. But then I found out I was pregnant.”
“You gave birth to Willa in the first year of your marriage.” He didn’t have to pause to remember. As she’d said, Max thought uncomfortably, he’d read her file until he knew it by heart. “You must have gotten pregnant within months of the honeymoon.”
She nodded tightly, her eyes still averted. “Believe me, that wasn’t my plan at all. I was horrified.” She shrugged tensely. “By then I knew Kenneth had only married me because he’d come to the conclusion it was time for him to be married, and because I looked decorative on his arm at social functions. But I filled my days with shopping and my evenings with parties, and I still thought I’d made a good deal. Pregnancy would end all that, and I knew it.” She turned to him suddenly, her gaze glittering with unshed tears. “Do you know what I did the afternoon the doctor confirmed my suspicions, Max? Was that in my file?”
He shook his head, keeping his eyes on hers. “No. What did you do?”
Even if it had been in the damned file he would have wanted to hear it from her, he realized slowly. The reports on her—the reports he’d read and reread until he thought he knew everything about Julia, including what made her tick—were crap, he thought in sudden anger. The subject of them bore no relation at all to the guilt-ridden woman sitting here in front of him and turning a merciless spotlight on her soul.
How many people had the courage to examine their innermost selves as unflinchingly? Not you, Ross, he told himself heavily. The only way you can live with yourself is by keeping to the shadows.
“I went out and bought a skintight sequined dress with practically no back and a slit up one thigh. It looked like I’d been poured into it.” Her laugh was uneven. “I tried on shoes until I found the perfect pair of Blahnik stilettos, and I had my hair done. Kenneth was out of the country on a business trip, but that didn’t matter. I went to a party and danced until dawn with one man after another, and I told myself I was having a fabulous time.” She smiled tightly at him. “I’d never felt so alone in my whole life. When I finally got home that night I peeled off that ridiculously uncomfortable dress, kicked off those heels and stood in front of the mirror absolutely naked. I persuaded myself that I could already see a curve to my belly that hadn’t been there before. I put my hands on my stomach, and suddenly it hit me—there was a baby growing inside me. My baby. A child who needed me. And all at once everything I’d always thought I’d wanted meant nothing at all anymore.”
An imperious ding sounded from the direction of the kitchen as the oven timer went off. Max ignored it.
“And then you recalled the agreement you’d signed?”
Julia shook her head, her smile unsteady and her gaze lit with remembered joy. She drew her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them in an oddly protective gesture, as if there was still a child inside her to shield.
“Don’t forget I was the queen of self-deception, Max. I didn’t let myself think about the agreement, I just was happy—supremely happy—for the first time in my life. Even Kenneth’s reaction when the ultrasound revealed we were going to have a girl instead of the boy he’d wanted didn’t change the way I felt. The first time Willa kicked inside me I nearly went crazy with excitement.” Her smile faltered. “But yes, eventually I remembered. I remembered when they put her into my arms after she was born. She was so perfect and so innocent—and already the person she depended on to keep her safe had let her down. I—I didn’t deserve her, Max. I didn’t deserve her, and I knew it.”
She swung her legs off the sofa. Placing her hands on her jeans-clad thighs, she pushed herself to her feet. Julia Tennant had fallen a long way down, Max thought, standing himself and taking in the windbreaker she was wearing, the graze on her forehead, the scraped-back hair. He’d helped with that fall. Maybe her self-assessment had been partly right. Maybe the girl she’d once been had been frivolous and foolish and shallow, and maybe it had been inevitable that life would teach her a lesson or two along the way. But whatever she thought about herself, there was a forlorn gallantry in her that must have always been there.
She’d never had a chance, he thought, the anger catching and flaring within him. There were details that hadn’t made it into the public file, that the press had never learned, that Julia herself had probably s
hoved into the furthest recesses of her mind. Details like her playboy father, Sylvia’s first husband, whose penchant for thrills and experimentation had ended in a Paris hotel room when Julia had been seven, with the official cause of his death being listed as a tragically allergic reaction to some prescribed medication he’d been on. Sylvia herself, who’d found that her blue-blooded and extravagant young husband’s trust fund had ceased with his death, had spent the rest of her life snaring and discarding wealthy husbands until her latest amour had killed both of them by taking a curve too fast with three times the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream. Details like the men Sylvia had taken between husbands, including a certain wealthy European industrialist who’d been attracted more to a teenaged Julia than to her mother and whose attentions had come to light only after Julia had been caught trying to steal a handgun from the locked desk of the father of one of her schoolfriends.
And Kenneth Tennant himself, who’d had no interest in his beautiful young wife beyond the flawless image she projected and the heir she could provide him with.
Max felt a surge of self-dislike. Finally, there was the agent who’d been assigned to her case. He himself had looked at Julia and seen only the golden facade, completely missing the essence of the woman, her one defining characteristic. Because of his blindness, she’d lost her very reason for living.
He couldn’t make everything right for her. But he could try to give her back that.
“You probably didn’t deserve her.” She’d already taken a step away from him, but at his words she turned, her expression stricken. He went on, his voice not entirely steady. “Nobody deserves the total love and trust of a child. Nobody ever truly earns it. But children are too young to know that, and they give it anyway. Willa did, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” She squeezed her eyes shut, as if riding out a wave of pain. She opened them again, and Max saw the crystalline tears that had once struck him as impossibly contrived trembling at the corners of her lashes. “She gave me total love, Max. I was the center of her world, and she was the center of mine. But as you said, children are too young to know who’s worth their love and who’s not.”
There was a finality in her tone. She really believed it, he thought slowly. She really believed she wasn’t worthy of the love of her own child because of a single thoughtless act she’d regretted ever since.
Or did it go deeper than that? Sudden comprehension tore through him, and with it came a swift stab of appalled compassion.
“It wasn’t the agreement you signed, was it? That’s got nothing to do with letting her go.” He crossed the space between them before she could turn away again, and took her by the shoulders.
Her expression closed down. “It has everything to do with it. For God’s sake, Max—what more proof do I need to convince myself that I’m not the mother Willa deserves?”
“But that’s just it—you never needed any proof,” he said forcefully, tightening his grip on her as she tried to pull away. “Because you learned a long time ago that you didn’t deserve to be loved. That’s why you told yourself you weren’t looking for it in a marriage, and that’s why when you finally found it with Willa you wouldn’t allow yourself to have it.”
Her gaze was dark with denial, but behind the denial Max thought he could see another, stronger emotion. Her response was automatic. “That’s crazy, Agent Ross. Maybe it’s time you chose something else to read before bedtime. It’s obvious that poring over my biography is starting to get to you.”
“It would get to anyone who cared to read between the lines,” he agreed promptly. “I thought I was the one who put you in prison. But you were already there—you’ve been there for a long, long time. Who was it who put the final brick in that wall that surrounds you, Julia? Was it your father, who never seemed to know he even had a daughter? Sylvia, picking you up and depositing you in one new home after another as if you were a monogrammed piece of luggage she had to remind herself not to leave behind? Or was it left to Kenneth to finally teach you that there was nothing worthwhile about you except the way you looked?” He gave her a small shake. “Whoever it was, they were wrong. The only one who was right was Willa.”
“If she was so right then how come her mother ended up leaving her, Max? If she was so right, then why was I punished?” Julia twisted out of his grasp, her voice rising as she flung the questions at him like accusations. “Twelve strangers sat in judgment on me and found me guilty, dammit—and even if I didn’t commit the crime they convicted me for, I must have deserved that verdict for some reason!”
She held up her left hand. It was shaking so badly that the obscene marks on it were a red blur against the white of her skin. “This is the proof, Max! The way you looked at me the night I was released proves what kind of person I am! All my life I’ve been terrified that someone will find out what the real Julia Tennant looks like, and now the whole world knows. She’s not pretty at all, is she? There’s nothing worth loving about her—and she doesn’t deserve to keep her child!”
She stared up at him, the skin stretched so tautly over her features that her bones stood out in sharp relief. She was still holding her hand out, and at the sight of it Max felt something inside him give way painfully. His own touch unsteady, he caught her fingers lightly.
“No, she’s not pretty anymore,” he said hoarsely. “Pretty is for girls. Pretty is on the surface. She used to be just pretty, but now she’s beautiful.” He bent his head to her hand. His eyes never leaving her suddenly wide and fearful gaze, gently he pressed a kiss to the wounded palm. He felt the shudder that ran through her. “Willa’s mother is a beautiful woman who walked through fire and survived, Julia. Everything about her is proof of that.”
For the space of a heartbeat she simply stared at him, her face a frozen mask. Then her mouth opened in a silent rictus of grief, tears flooding her eyes and spilling over, those perfect features contorting in overwhelming anguish. Two years ago with her freedom at stake, the woman he’d eventually put behind bars had taken the stand at her trial and cried so exquisitely that her mascara hadn’t even run, Max remembered. Now Julia’s face was free of any makeup, and there was nothing delicate at all about her sorrow. It blazed, naked and raw, from the red-rimmed eyes, and when her voice finally burst from her throat it came out in an almost inarticulate sob.
“I want her back, Max! Sometimes I pretend she’s just behind me, or she’s in the next room, or she’s waiting for me around the corner. But then I turn the corner and she’s not there, and I have to start pretending all over again.”
She didn’t protest when he pulled her roughly to his chest and wrapped his arms around the shaking shoulders. He could feel the hot wetness of her tears soaking through his shirt as she went on, her voice muffled.
“Barbara always wanted children. She only got married because she didn’t want to wait any longer to start a family of her own. When Willa was a baby Babs knew exactly what to do when she had a stomach upset, and the toys she bought her were always the ones the child-care books recommended. She used to babysit when I had to attend some gathering or another with Kenneth in the evenings, and once when I went in to kiss Willa good-night before going out I had on a beaded dress. One of the beads must have come off and fallen into her crib when I tucked her in. Barbara found it just as Willa was trying to put it into her mouth.”
She looked up at him, her face blotchy and stray strands of her hair sticking wetly to her cheeks. “You’re wrong, Max. I’m not the best mother for her—Barbara is. She won’t make any mistakes. She won’t let her down. Willa needs a mother like Babs, not someone like me!”
He hadn’t wanted to let her know, Max thought in frustration. But Julia was strong—strong enough to give up the most precious thing in her world if she thought it was the right decision. Brutal or not, he had to show her it wasn’t.
“She thinks you left because you didn’t want her,” he said harshly. “Your sister-in-law’s tried everything—told her you didn’t want to
go, told her you’ll always love her even if you can’t be with her, taken her to counsellors for professional therapy. It’s helped a little. Most of the time she’s happy enough. But she still thinks it was something she did that sent you away. She still thinks that if you love her, you’ll come back for her. I do too.”
“She—she thinks it was her fault?” Clutching twin handfuls of his shirt, Julia stared at him in shock. “She thinks I left because I didn’t love her anymore? Oh, no, Max! No—she can’t believe that! I can’t let her believe that! If she grows up thinking that she’ll end up just like—”
She stopped in midsentence, her hands flying to her mouth in an oddly childlike gesture as if for a split second she was once again the little girl she’d been and was appalled at how close she’d come to telling her most closely guarded secret. Her eyes widened painfully.
“She’ll end up just like me,” she whispered. “How soon can you take me to her, Max?”
Chapter Six
“This is what you meant when you said you’d take me to see my daughter?” Julia stared at the man in front of her in disbelief, and then across the wooded valley below them to a barely visible path skirting the edge of a gorge. She could just make out the sparkle of early-morning sunlight on the wide ribbon of water cutting between the far-off cliffs. “What the hell am I supposed to be using—binoculars?”
“They’re Agency issue. We use them for surveillance all the time. Trust me, you’ll be able to see every freckle on her nose.” Unslinging the canvas duffel bag he’d worn over his shoulder since they’d left the car half an hour ago, Max reached inside and pulled out a lightweight pair of field glasses. She didn’t take them from him.
“I don’t get it, Max.” With difficulty she regulated the timbre of her voice. “Last night you said Willa needed to have me back in her life. Catching a glimpse of her on a nature walk with ten other children and their parents without being able to let her know I’m here isn’t being back in her life. How is spying on her through the trees from half a mile away going to reassure her about anything?”