by Raye Morgan
Still, people gathered around for congratulations. And while Cam was involved in that, Diane slipped away. She headed for her car. She knew she was being a rat and leaving all the cleanup to others, but she couldn’t help it. She had to get away. If she hadn’t been here to confuse things, Cam would have been free to choose one of the rich girls. The only remedy she could think of was to clear the field and give him space to do what he needed to do. She had to get out of here.
She raced home, packed a bag in three minutes and called her assistant, Penny, and asked her to come house-sit, kitten-sit and dog-sit. That was a lot of sitting, but Penny was up for it. In no time at all she was on her way to San Francisco. It was going to be a long night.
Cam didn’t know she was gone until the next morning when he got an e-mail from her. It was short and scary.
Cam, please go on with your life without me. I’m going to be gone for a week or two so that you can get used to it. When I come back, I don’t want to see you. Please. Don’t bother to reply, I won’t be reading my e-mail. A clean break is the best way. Di.
He went straight to her house just in case and found Penny there.
“She said she had to go to San Francisco,” Penny said when he demanded to know where Diana had gone. “I’m not sure where. She’ll probably call me tonight to see how the animals are. Do you want me to give her a message?”
He shook his head. “I can’t wait until tonight. You really can’t give me any better clue than that?”
“Well…She did say something about staying where she stayed when she got pregnant with Mia. I think she wanted to revisit the base of her decision or something. She was muttering and I couldn’t really catch her meaning.”
His heart turned to stone in his chest. She was going to see Mia’s father. He was sure of it. He should leave her alone. Maybe she could work something out with him. That would be best for Diana, best for Mia. Wouldn’t it?
Everything in him rebelled at that thought. No! That was crazy. The man was obviously not right for either one of them—and anyway, he wasn’t going to give up the woman that he loved without a fight. He was going to find her if he had to go door to door through the whole city.
But first he had to have a last meeting with his grandfather.
He took the stairs two at a time and raced down to the old man’s wing of the house, entering his room with a preemptory knock.
“May I talk to you for a moment?”
The old man raised his shaggy head. “I was expecting you,” he said simply.
Cam went in and began to pace.
“Grandfather, I’ve come to tell you that I’ve failed. I thought I had a line on some financing that might work out, but today I’ve been told that is no longer an option.” He stopped and looked at his aged relative. “Everything I’ve tried to set up has fallen through. I’ve come to the end of my bag of tricks. I don’t know where to go from here.” Taking a deep breath, he said the fatal words he’d hoped he would never have to say. “I’m afraid we’re going to lose the house.”
His grandfather frowned. “What about one of the Five Family girls? I saw some that looked interested last night. Don’t tell me you’re going to turn them down again.”
Cam took a deep breath and let it out. “I think you know I can’t do what you want, Grandfather. I can’t do that to any of those girls. I can’t do that to myself.”
“Or to the Collins girl,” his grandfather said angrily. “Isn’t that the real problem?”
He hesitated, swore and turned on his heel toward the door.
“Hold it,” the old man called. “Stop right there.”
He turned back, eyes narrowed. “Grandfather…”
“You shut up,” the older man cried, pointing at him. “I’ve got something to say.”
Cam stood still, his jaw rigid, and his grandfather calmed himself down.
“Now, I know I’ve been a stickler for staying with the Five Families. Me and the old men of those families—we’ve always wanted to keep the old times alive by keeping our community together and close-knit. We figured it would be good to get the younger ones to marry in the group and keep us strong. Crazy, probably.” Shaking his head, he shrugged. “Time moves on. You can’t force these things on people. I know, I’ve tried to do it often enough.”
Cam stood still, scowling.
“What I’m trying to say,” the old man went on, “is that I understand. You love the Collins girl, don’t you? Even if she’s having someone else’s baby. Even if it means we’ll lose the house. You don’t care. You just want her.”
“I know that’s how it looks to you,” Cam said. “And I’m sorry. I’ve done everything I can to save the house, including putting my own business up for sale. But I can’t do what can’t be done.”
“I know. I know.” He sighed heavily. “Oh, hell, go marry your girl. Start over. We’ll be okay. We’ll get a little place in the hills and live simply. We’ve gone through hard times before. We can do it again.”
Cam felt as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Grandfather…”
“Just go get her.” He waved his gnarled hand. “Go.”
Cam stepped forward, kissed the old man on the cheek and turned for the door. He was going to do what he had to do anyway, but having his grandfather’s blessing made it so much easier.
Hopping into his car, he turned toward the city by the bay. Just as he was leaving, Penny called on his cell.
“I’m only telling you this because I know she’s crazy about you,” she told him. “She just called and gave me the number where she’s staying. It’s a landline. Maybe you can use it to find the address.”
Of course he could. And he would.
His research led him to an unassuming row house at the top of a hill. Wearing snug jeans and a big leather jacket, he rang the bell, not knowing whether he would find her with a friend or with the man who’d fathered her baby. When a nice looking young woman answered the door, he was relieved, and it didn’t take much fast talking to get past her and into the sitting room where Diana was curled up on the couch, her eyes red-rimmed, her hair a mass of yellow curls around her face.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Di’s friend said, but he hardly noticed. All he could see was Diana and the wary, tortured look in her dark eyes.
“I love you,” he told her, loud and clear. “Di, I want to marry you.”
She shook her head. “You can’t,” she said, her voice trembling. Tears were threatening. From the looks of it, she’d been doing a lot of that already.
He stared at her for a long moment, then looked around the room. “So where is he?” he asked shortly.
She blinked. “Where is who?”
“Mia’s father.” He looked at her. “Isn’t that who you came to find? I want to meet this jerk.”
She shook her head. “Why do you call him a jerk?” she asked. “What do you have against him?”
“He went off and left you, didn’t he? He’s never there when you need him the most.”
She closed her eyes and swayed. “Oh, Cam.”
He stood right in front of her.
“Diana, there are some things we need to get settled. The most important is whether Mia’s father is going to be a part of your life or not. Is he going to be involved in raising her? I don’t think you’ve told me the full truth about the situation yet.” He shook his head, his frustration plain in his face. “I want to know who he is. I want to know where he lives. I want to know…if you love him. I want to know what place he is going to have in your life in the future. This is very important.”
She raised her face to him. “Why?”
“Because I love you. Don’t you get that? And, dammit all, I love Mia, even though she hasn’t been born yet. I want to take care of you. I want to be with you. But I have to know…”
She began to laugh. He frowned, because her laughter didn’t sound right. Was she getting hysterical? But no. Sobering, she rose from the couch.
She took out a loose-leaf binder and opened it to a page that displayed a filled-in form. He stepped closer. At the top of the page was the heading, a simple three digit number. Down the page he saw a list of attributes, including height, weight, hair color, personality traits, talents. As he read down the list, his frown grew deeper. It could have been someone listing items about him. Every detail was just like his.
“What is this?” he asked her.
“That is Mia’s father,” she said, holding her chin high with effort.
He shook his head. “It sounds like me.”
She tried to smile. “You got it.”
His bewilderment grew. “No, I don’t get it.”
She took a deep breath. “Cam, Mia’s father was a donor at an assisted reproduction clinic. I don’t know him. I never met him. I only picked him out of a book of donors.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“Yes.” She put a hand to her chest. “This is how crazy I am. I went to three different clinics and pored over charts of donors trying to find someone almost exactly like you. I couldn’t have you so I tried to come as close as possible to recreating what we might have had together.”
He could hardly believe what he was hearing. It sounded like a science fiction story to him. He shook his head as though to clear it. “Diana, I can’t believe this.”
Tears glittered in her eyes. “Do you hate me? I knew it was nuts. I felt like a criminal doing it. And…I sort of feel as though I was doing it to close that door, stop the yearning. I knew if I was going to do this, it would put a barrier between us that couldn’t be overcome. But it didn’t seem to matter, because there was less and less hope of ever seeing you again anyway.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “But I just had to go on with my life and stop waiting for you.”
“So you got pregnant.” He frowned, trying to assimilate this information. “Artificial insemination?”
“Yes.”
“And then I came back.”
She nodded. “How could I know you were ever going to come back? Cam, it had been ten years. Your family acted like you were dead. I had no way of knowing.”
“Oh, Diana.” Reaching out, he enfolded her in his arms and began to laugh. “So you’re telling me you’re actually carrying my baby. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. There is no other man involved. Just an anonymous donor.”
“That’s it.”
He laughed again, then kissed her and looked down into her pretty face. “Let’s get married.”
“Wait, Cam…”
“I mean it, Di. We’ve already got our baby. All we need is a wedding ring.”
“But what about your family?”
Quickly he told her about his conversation with his grandfather. “He basically gave me permission to marry you. Not that I was waiting on that. But it does make it less stressful.”
She searched his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” He dropped another kiss on her lips. “Say ‘yes’.”
She smiled up at him. “Yes.”
He whooped and danced her around the room. “I love you so much,” he told her. “Last night when I made you dance with me, you looked so beautiful, I could hardly stand it.”
“It was a nice party. Even if it didn’t get you a wealthy bride.”
“C’est la vie,” he said, and reached down to pick up some papers that had fallen out of his jacket pocket when he’d danced her around the room.
“What are those?” she asked, her sharp eyes catching sight of her own name on one of them.
He hesitated, then nodded for her to sit down at the table. “I got this information a few days ago but I was holding off on telling you,” he said. “You see, I did some research on what happened to your mother.”
She went very still. “What?”
“And here’s what I found.” He spread some papers out in front of her and took another out of an envelope. “She died in a cancer clinic in Sacramento. The date makes it right around the time you were six years old.”
Diana stared at the papers. “So what does that mean?”
“It’s my guess, from all the records I could find and what I could piece together, that your mother got a diagnosis of stomach cancer and she went away to a cancer clinic where she could concentrate on fighting the disease.”
“So she didn’t run off with another man? She didn’t just decide she hated us and couldn’t stay with us anymore?” Suddenly Diana eyes were filled with tears again. “Oh, Cam, I don’t know what to think. How do you know this? Why didn’t my father ever tell me?”
“My guess is that she thought she would get well and come back and be taking care of you again. She thought she had a chance, but luck wasn’t with her. She left because she couldn’t take care of you and deal with your father while she was going through that.”
Diana’s brows knit together. “Do you think my father knew?”
“Who knows what he knew or didn’t know. From what I hear, he was in pretty bad shape with the drinking around that time. She might have told him and he might have been too out of it to know what she was talking about.”
“Or he might have been that way because of what she told him.”
“True. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the truth.” He frowned. “So she had no living family, no one to leave you with?”
“Except my grandmother on my father’s side. She was still alive. I spent a lot of time at her house in those days. But she died when I was ten.”
“And she never said anything to you about your mother’s absence?”
She shook her head. “Not that I remember. I was only six years old, you know. Maybe she told me something that I didn’t understand at the time. Maybe she just avoided the issue. People of her generation tend to do that.”
“True.”
Diana drew in a shuddering breath. “It’s going to take some time to understand this,” she said. “To really take it all in. It’s a relief to know she didn’t just run off, but it’s so sad at the same time, and I feel like it’s sort of unreal right now. Like it’s about somebody else.”
He was frowning, looking at an envelope in the pile of papers he’d given her. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What’s this?”
He pulled it out. “Oh, I didn’t know this had come. I requested some information from a friend about that land you inherited. The envelope must have been stuck in with this other stuff. I didn’t see this before.”
He slit it open and began to read. Without looking up, he grabbed her arm. “Diana, you didn’t sign that contract with your cousin yet, did you?”
“Yes, I did,” she said. “I just mailed it today.”
He looked up, his eyes wide. “You’ve got to get it back. Where did you mail it?” He jumped up from his seat. “Quick! Where is it?”
“I put it outside for the mailman this morning. I doubt it will still be there.” She had to call after Cam because he was already running to the front of the house. “What’s the matter?”
The mailman was at the next house when Cam snatched the envelope from the box attached to the front of the house where she’d put it. He sucked in a deep breath and leaned against the building. “Wow,” he said. “Just wow.”
Turning slowly, he made his way back into the house where Diana was waiting.
“What’s going on?” she said.
He waved the envelope at her. “My friend in Sacramento came through with some inside info. That piece of land? A major hotel chain is planning a huge resort there. That land will be worth twenty times what your cousin offered you for it. Whatever you do, hold on to that land.”
“Wow.” Diana said it, too. “Does this mean…I’m rich?”
“Pretty much.”
A huge smile began to break over her face. “Then I guess you ended up with a rich girl after all, didn’t you?”
; He grinned and kissed her. “See? That was my plan from the first,” he said. “I just had to wait until you were rich enough to help me save the farm.”
“Will this do it? Seriously?”
He shrugged. “Hard to tell. But just having it means there are lenders who will give us extensions they wouldn’t give us before. It’ll certainly help.”
“Good.” Her bubbling laughter was infectious. “This is too much. I feel like I’m in the middle of an overload situation. Turn off the bubble machine.”
“This is just the beginning,” he told her, sweeping her up into his arms again. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
And he gave her a hard, deep kiss to seal the deal.
EPILOGUE
MORNING crept in on little dog feet but it was a cold black nose that woke Diana from her sleep. Then two doggy feet hit the mattress beside her head and she sighed. Those feet weren’t really so little anymore.
“You monster,” she said affectionately, and Billy panted happily, knowing love when he saw it. “Billy’s here,” she told Cam.
He turned and groaned, then rose from the bed.
“Come on you mangy mutt,” he grumbled. “I’ll let you out.”
She watched him walk naked from the room, his beautiful body shining in the morning light, wondering how she had managed to be so lucky. All her dreams had come true. Did she really deserve this happiness? He was back in a moment and this time he closed the door with a decisive snap, then turned and reached for her before he’d even hit the bed. Making love was sweet and slow in the morning, warm affection building to hot urgency, then fading to the most intense love imaginable as the sensations melted away.
“That one’s going to be our next baby,” he said, letting his fingertips trail over her generous breasts.
“You think?”
“I know. I could tell.”
“How?
“Magic.”
Mia’s happy morning voice penetrated the closed door. She was singing to herself.
“She’s awake.”