by Ann Major
A tight band closed around Amy’s heart. She could hardly breathe.
Nick had said she’d spoiled Lorrie, and he was right. Her sister’s lack of character was probably partly her fault. Sickened with a mixture of remorse, disgust, and shame that she’d enabled her sister and gone along with her lies, no, embellished them, she whirled away and said nothing.
What was there she could say? Lorrie wasn’t a little girl anymore, though she still acted like one far too often. This wasn’t a childish bit of mischief that could be instantly forgiven or forgotten. Amy saw how wrong she had been to spoil her. How wrong she’d been to lie to Nick...
Nick was innocent. He’d never been unfaithful to her. Because of her own lack of confidence in herself, Amy had believed Lorrie.
Amy’s heart felt near bursting with the pain of it all. Oh, why had she? Was it just that she was used to always believing her younger sister, to always protecting her? That was no excuse. Amy had hardened her heart with hatred toward an innocent man, a man who’d loved her. She’d had so little faith in herself, so little faith in him, she’d never given him a chance to defend himself. She’d been so selfish and blind with her own hurt that she’d built up a case against him to soothe her wounds. She’d posed as the mother of his child, accepting money from Sebastian, accepting marriage from Nick, and everything she’d done was based on a horrendous lie. She’d lived on hate. She’d treated him cruelly, deliberately keeping him from Triple. She’d thought he’d destroyed all their lives, but he hadn’t. She had.
He would never forgive her.
She would never be able to forgive herself.
Through the haze of her pain, Amy heard Lorrie’s voice. It was indistinct, blurred, but Amy caught every word.
“Don’t you see? You can’t tell him. You’ve been unhappy for so long. You deserve happiness. Don’t tell him, and everything will be all right.”
That was the same destructive pattern of thinking that had gotten them all into such trouble.
A dull hammer pounded in Amy’s temple. Nothing would ever be all right again.
If she didn’t tell the truth, she would hate herself forever.
If she told the truth, she would lose Nick forever.
A lonely, black despair closed over her.
She wasn’t even aware that Lorrie had slipped quietly out of the house.
Nine
The afternoon sun cast filaments of fire upon the glimmering waves. Purple shadows slanted across the beach.
Amy sat motionless in the brooding silence of her bedroom and waited for Nick to come home. She had to tell him everything—as soon as possible.
But how was she ever going to convince him that she had believed she was doing right by going to Sebastian and telling him she was pregnant? Amy had been used to shouldering responsibility, to fighting her sister’s battles. Besides, from the day Amy had first lifted Triple into her arms in the hospital, she’d wanted him to be her child more than anything. From that first moment, when his tiny hand had curled around her little finger and clung, she’d been his mother. Everything else had seemed insignificant. The shame of letting everyone believe her an unwed mother had seemed as nothing when compared to the prospect of putting him up for adoption. She’d loved him with all the fierce, protective loyalty only a mother could feel.
Amy had married Nick when he’d threatened a custody battle, only because she’d been afraid that he might somehow find out the truth about Triple’s parentage. If Nick had found out then that she wasn’t Triple’s natural mother, she thought he might have taken the child away from her.
She’d misjudged Nick. She only hoped there was some way to make up for it.
An eternity later the front door banged open, and she heard Nick’s heavy tread in the hall. Her heart lurched as his footsteps approached her bedroom. Then he paused, and the house became silent. What was he doing?
The minutes ticked by, one by one, and he didn’t come. Where was he? What was he doing? She twisted her hands. Then she leaped to her feet. She would rather face being drawn and quartered than tell the man she loved what she’d done, but she had to get it over with. She left her room and went downstairs.
Standing outside the den, Amy heard the whisper of excited male voices. Silently she opened the door a crack and peered in. Nick and Sam were sitting on the couch, huddled over a new computer chessboard resting on a low table. Nick’s raspy voice was a murmur of patient explanation.
Her heart contracted in fresh shame as she watched this latest example of Nick’s kindness. He was very busy with the South Sails move, but he had taken the time to buy her father a gift.
“I need to talk to you,” she said so quietly her words didn’t quite carry across the room.
He glanced up quizzically. A glare of copper-gold light flooded into the room. Her hair was tumbling about her shoulders in fire-tipped waves, her bosom heaving nervously. He flashed her a dazzling smile.
“Come here, darling,” he said, “see what I found for Sam.”
As he continued to look at her steadily, she felt the warm glow of his love, and her hand fluttered to her heart with new misgivings.
“I—I was worried—you were gone so long,” she murmured, too ashamed to say more.
“I had to look in several stores to find this,” he said, pulling her down beside him. Tenderly his lips grazed her icy brow. “I was just telling Sam that Mercedes, Dad and Jeb are coming tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow...” The word died halfway up her throat.
Misinterpreting her anguished tone to be lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of his parents’ imminent visit, Nick folded her freezing cold hands in his. “I know there’s not much time for you to get ready, darling, but Apolonia’s better now. And we’ll do a lot of eating out. I’ll pitch in. I tried to find Triple to tell him, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. His room was as silent as a tomb and as tidily arranged as a museum. It’s obvious he hasn’t been near it in hours. His sailboat is lying on its side by the pool.”
“It’s always a bad sign when Triple doesn’t mess up his room or when he gets quiet and goes off by himself,” Amy said.
Normally Amy would have been more worried about Triple’s odd disappearance, but she was too preoccupied with her own problem to give it the attention it deserved.
She turned away from Nick and her father, from the dancing red lights of the computer board as they moved the chess pieces. There was no way she could spoil Nick’s family’s visit by telling him the truth now. She would have to wait.
Triple’s behavior remained strange even after Jeb, Mercedes and Wayne Jackson arrived. Though they brought Triple presents and made a fuss over him, he kept to his room as much as possible. In the past when Triple had a quiet period, it had usually been a lull before the storm.
Amy immediately loved Nick’s family, and because she did, her problem was magnified. It was as if her secret were growing to affect them.
Wayne Jackson was an older, almost exact replica of Nick. He had Nick’s same restless, excessive energy, his indomitable will, the same pale hair—silvered now—and brilliant blue eyes. Wayne was larger than life, stomping around Malibu in his jeans, custom-made boots and Stetson. He was a Texan to the core, outgoing and friendly to a fault, stopping strangers on the beach with a howdy and a smile, and treating them to long, drawn-out conversation, Texas-style. At first they would stare at him in wonder and listen with more wonder, privacy being the most highly prized of all Malibu commodities. But soon he had them up at the house for a drink, introducing Amy to neighbors she’d lived near for years and never met.
Mercedes was quieter, darker and lovely, even though she was almost sixty. She had the slender, graceful figure of a girl, and a beautiful way of moving. She had formerly been Mercedes Montez, the great Mexican ballerina, before giving up her career to marry Wayne. Her long, black hair was streaked with ribbons of silver. She was not so blatantly a Texan as Wayne and Jeb. She was more sophisticated, having lived all over
the world. Mercedes had a melodious Spanish accent, rather than a flat Texas drawl, but for all her outward softness and femininity, Amy sensed in her a formidable will the equal of her husband’s.
Jeb was dark and quiet, more like his mother than his father; yet he was a mixture of both these strong personalities. He was tall and bold, heavily muscled and strong. He exuded an aura of command and managed an empire bigger than many countries. In some indefinable way he reminded her of Nick. There was a restlessness in Jeb. It seemed as if he were in conflict with himself, as if despite everything he had, there was something missing in his life. Amy sensed a deep affection between the two brothers, yet she was immediately aware of their rivalry.
“Amy’s too pretty and smart to be your wife,” Jeb had drawled lazily on first meeting her, pulling her into his arms before he tipped his hat back and kissed her. “No wonder you haven’t brought her to Texas to meet your big brother.”
“That wasn’t why.”
A look flashed between the brothers.
“Easy, boy,” Jeb said, letting her go. “Just welcoming her into the family Texas-style.”
Amy found herself in the possessive iron grip of her husband’s arms.
“Maybe it’s time you got married again,” Nick said.
Jeb’s warm, black eyes lingered on Amy. “Maybe so. You’ve certainly proved that finding the right wife could be a worthwhile enterprise.”
Nick was careful not to leave Amy and Jeb alone together for long.
Amy wasn’t able to resist teasing Nick.
“Surely you trust your own brother.”
“Of course, I trust him. About as far as I can throw him.”
“Nick...”
“Jeb’s the oldest Jackson son. He thinks he’s a king. He rules a world. He has to know he’s not a king here. Not in my house.”
“He’s your brother.”
“My half brother. A legitimate son. Neither of us has ever been able to forget that.”
“You love him?”
“That goes without saying. But love doesn’t have to blind you to the defects in someone’s character. He used to resent me when I was a kid, when I came to Texas—and I resented him. I thought he had everything—a father and mother who loved and wanted him, the ranch. He could do everything better than me. There’s nobody that knows more about horses, cows and oil than Jeb. He belonged in the family. I didn’t. But I’ve carved out a life of my own. You’re mine, not his. He can have the ranch. He can have everything else. All I want is you.”
Nick had made love to her so passionately that night that Amy had almost been glad of his jealousy.
Mercedes was a natural matchmaker. She was obviously thrilled to find Nick so happy. Once when the men had gone out with Sebastian to sail on Sebastian’s Marauder, taking Triple with them, Mercedes caught Amy alone.
Apolonia was busy as usual in the garden, so they made tea themselves and carried their cups down to the pergola where they could watch the water and the glamorous people meandering along the beach, waving effusively to one another but rarely speaking. Mercedes and Amy talked of general things for a while, joking that dinner might be late if Apolonia didn’t abandon her gardening for the kitchen. At last a comfortable silence fell between them.
“This may be my only chance to talk to you privately,” Mercedes said gently. “I wanted to say that I’m happy you and Nick are together at last. I knew, of course, about your marriage, your separation. When there was no divorce, I could not help hoping there wouldn’t ever be one.”
There was such a motherly warmth about Mercedes that Amy did not mind the personal turn of the conversation.
“We still have problems,” Amy said, biting her bottom lip. “I’m not sure we can work them out.”
“You will,” Mercedes said softly. “I can tell by the way you look at each other. Sometimes it takes a while.” She hesitated. “Wayne and I were separated once. I’m sure Nick told you. We nearly lost each other because of a terrible misunderstanding. It was all my fault, but of course, I didn’t see it that way at the time. Injured feelings have a way of blinding one to the truth. Wayne even turned to another woman during that time, and the result was Nick. When I learned that I had been wrong about Wayne, I had to swallow my pride and go to him and beg his forgiveness. Neither of us knew about Nick for a long time.”
“And Wayne forgave you?”
“Not immediately. It took time. The first months of reconciliation are the most difficult. Sometimes it isn’t easy for two people to find each other, no matter how much they want to. And when we found out about Nick, it wasn’t long before even I was glad about him. Do you know that he’s more like Wayne than any of my three sons were? I have come to love him so much, sometimes I have to remind myself he’s not my son. One need not give birth to a child to feel like his mother. Nick has been alone too long. Make him happy, my dear. You have your child. It’s too bad you had to come so close to losing Triple before Nick and you could find each other again.”
“Triple was very sick. I was so frightened until Nick came. He’s been...wonderful.”
“Sometimes it takes a crisis to help us put life into perspective.” Mercedes’s eyes were moist. “I know all about the fear of losing a child. Such an experience has a powerful effect. I’ve lost two, you know.”
“Of course, I knew about Jack.”
“Years ago, I lost my only little girl, Julia. We never found her...”
“Nick never told me.”
“It’s not something any of us have spoken of, but I’ve never forgotten her. I’ve always wondered if she was dead or alive.”
“That must be dreadful.”
“When you’re as old as I, you will know that life is filled with both sorrow and happiness. Without the one, you cannot appreciate the other. The tragedies brought me closer to my husband and the children I have left. I have much to be thankful for. So do you. Make Nick happy.”
If only it were that simple, Amy thought.
The Jacksons’ presence in their lives increased Amy’s awareness of how wonderful being truly married to Nick could be—if only she was not constantly haunted by the guilt of her secret lie. It ate at her heart, robbing her of genuine happiness. The Jacksons liked her and trusted her, and sometimes a pressure built in her to shout that nothing was the way they thought it was, that she was not worthy of their trust. But she kept her silence.
To entertain the Jacksons, they went sailing, dined in the best restaurants so that Mercedes could stargaze, and went sight-seeing. Jeb and Wayne proved to be as reckless behind the wheel of a car as Nick was. From time to time when they didn’t know she was listening, she would hear them singing in the same raucous off-key manner Nick had when he was alone. Even if Nick had been born a bastard, he was one of them.
Mercedes told Triple she’d brought him an autographed picture of Nugget, the little horse she’d bought for him.
“Horses can’t write,” Triple had said.
“Nugget is a very special pony.” Mercedes turned the picture over. “He writes in his own way.” On the photograph’s back was a hoofprint.
Triple burst into laughter. “I have to come to Texas, soon.”
It was a whirlwind, fun-filled visit. Triple remained quiet, which was fortunate in a way because he was on his best behavior. Nick was a marvelous host. He told Amy that soon he would take her to Australia to meet Tad, his other brother, who ran the Australian cattle stations that belonged to the Jackson Ranch.
Triple kept asking about the Jackson jet. Saturday afternoon Wayne and Jeb took Triple and Amy to the airport to meet their pilot who was a beautiful redhead named Megan MacKay. She’d grown up on the Jackson Ranch. Megan took Triple aboard and gave him a tour of the jet. For the first time Triple was his old energetic self, and Amy knew he would soon make a complete recovery.
Triple took great interest in examining everything. There was a lot of excitement for a while when he got lost somewhere at the airport. Then he popped u
p. He seemed quite pleased when he came home that evening, and he did not go to his room until he was made to.
On Sunday it was time for the Jacksons to leave. Amy and Nick drove them to the airport to see them off. Because it was late and Triple said he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go to bed, Amy and Nick had gone to the airport alone.
When they returned they were happy, but a little sad, too, because the Jacksons were gone. Amy was exhausted, both emotionally and physically from their visit.
Nick and Amy were in their bedroom undressing for bed, and as Amy stared at her impassive pale face in the mirror she made a silent vow. “Tomorrow... Tomorrow when I’m rested, I’ll tell him everything.”
Nick came up from behind her, and his golden head bent over her dark one. “My family loves you,” he said huskily. “Just as I do.”
“And I love them.”
“I think we have the beginnings of a real marriage.”
She turned away and bit her bottom lip.
“More than the beginnings,” he went on in the same velvet tone. “Have you ever asked yourself what has held us together for all these years, even when we almost never saw each other? Was it only our child? Or was there something more, some deeper reason why neither of us took the steps to end our relationship?”
She was silent. Her heart hammered against her rib cage. She could not say anything. If he knew the truth—
“I want another child,” he said.
“You keep rushing me.”
He came close to her again. She had taken off everything but her silk slip. His hands glided slowly over her spine to press her against his hard, lithe body. His voice was soft against her ear, his mouth brushing the bottom edge of her earlobe. “Because I love you. Because I sense that even now you’re not completely mine. There are still some barriers between us. If we had another child and could share everything about the experience...”
Her head was spinning as he kissed the back of her neck. “N-no. That’s not the answer.”