Willow Springs: A Destiny Novel

by Toni Blake

  “No,” she replied. “But I think it could make him notice you in a whole new way. And then he might fall in love with you.”

  Hmm. Amy had to think about that for a minute.

  She wasn’t a naturally sexy person, and she’d never aspired to be something she wasn’t.

  But Anna Romo was back in town and Logan was smitten with her. And even though Amy herself had never done it before, she didn’t think there was anything wrong with women dressing to show off their best assets.

  And the longer she stood there, the more she saw the effect Tessa was talking about—her waist looked much more slender and her breasts stood out. And it really wasn’t all that uncomfortable now that she was getting used to it.

  So she finally said to Tessa, “Okay, we’ll take it in at the waist.”

  “Hooray,” Tessa said. “I’ll go get Mary Ann and tell her she has one more alteration.”

  Of course, Amy knew it was going to take more than a fitted dress for Logan to really see her the way she wanted him to. And she still wouldn’t hold a candle to Anna Romo. And the very idea of trying to be sexy, sexual, felt very foreign to her, even despite the urges of her body.

  But she figured, on the other hand, that it couldn’t hurt.

  Anna sat in Mike and Rachel’s living room on the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, hands resting easily on her knee, trying to be calm. And cool. And confident. That was how she’d dealt with her mother’s mental illness. By just trying to be . . . above it all. It was like a wall, a barrier, that allowed her to feel some control. Except her mother wasn’t her mother anymore. Tonight she was meeting her real mother. And she was scared shitless.

  She supposed, deep inside, she’d felt that way ever since she’d realized she had no idea who she was. Anna Romo. Who came from a place she didn’t remember. From a family she didn’t know. The name still felt foreign on her tongue. Romo. Ro-mo. She’d learned it was Italian. In fact, last night Rachel had told her the story of how Anna’s real grandfather had come to America from Italy in the fifties and had a romance with Rachel’s grandma. It was a fascinating story. About people she didn’t know.

  When the doorbell rang, she flinched. She watched as Rachel came from the kitchen, an apron covering her stylish capris and sleek, silky leopard-print top, and something about the sight made her smile. Rachel didn’t fit here anymore than she did—and yet . . . she’d learned how. She made it work. And she seemed incredibly happy. “That’ll be Lucky and Tessa,” she said. “And I just got a text from Mike—he and your parents should be here in a few minutes.”

  “Great,” she said, hoping it sounded more sincere than sarcastic. Since it was sincere. Except that maybe being scared shitless added just a tinge of sarcasm. They were all so happy to have her here—had anyone stopped at any point to realize how difficult this was from her end, how hard it had been to come driving into Destiny, opening up a whole new-yet-old life she knew nothing about? Yes, she wanted to be here, she wanted to know these people—but it was turning out to be more overwhelming than she’d ever stopped to envision.

  “Oops, wrong,” Rachel said as she opened the door. “It’s Logan.”

  It had been Anna who had tossed out the idea of inviting him. Because something about him had made her immediately comfortable. She’d felt drawn to him. And he was cute and nice, two things she valued in a guy.

  “Hey,” he said, lifting his hand in a wave across the room.

  Anna returned it. Though her smile felt manufactured, nervous. But she was glad to see him anyway.

  “I need to get back to the kitchen,” Rachel told them both as the tangy scent of lasagna wafted over the counter that separated the two rooms.

  “Need any help?” Logan asked.

  Crap. I should have offered to help. But it honestly hadn’t crossed Anna’s mind—too much else occupied it right now.

  “No, I’ve got everything taken care of,” Rachel replied.

  “Gotcha,” Logan said, then walked over to join Anna on the couch. Sitting down, he quietly asked, “So . . . you doin’ okay?”

  She tossed him a nervous sideways glance in reply. “Does it show that I’m not?”

  His soft chuckle relaxed her a little, seeming to trickle down her spine like a warm touch. “It’s a lot to deal with, I’m sure.”

  She nodded and didn’t even weigh her words as she said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Did his smile hold a hint of flirtation or was that only wishful thinking? “Why’s that?”

  “Because you’ll be the only person here whose last name isn’t Romo—or won’t soon be.” Then she got even more honest. “And because I like you.” She’d never been shy.

  When the doorbell rang again, this time it was Lucky and Tessa—Anna recognized them from pictures Mike had shown her last night. As she peered over from the couch, her heart rose to her throat.

  And then—oh God—she heard Mike’s voice, and then an older woman’s, and realized Mike and her birthparents were here already, too. She sucked in her breath.

  That was when Logan reached out to touch her arm. “It’s okay. They’re great people and this is where you belong.”

  The words did something to calm her, strengthen her, just as they were intended to. And so Anna steeled herself, pushed to her feet, and knew it was time to meet the rest of her family. This was what she’d come here for, after all. Even if it seemed utterly surreal.

  As she made her way to the door, her mother and father walked through it. Everyone else was there, too—Mike, Lucky, their fiancées—but at the moment John and Nancy Romo were really all she could see.

  Like her brothers, they looked like her, especially John. Clearly, the Romo genes ran deep. And that’s who I am now. It’s actually who I’ve always been. A Romo. Both of her parents appeared as emotional as she might have expected, their eyes glassy, expressions drawn.

  “Oh,” her mother breathed. Her new mother. “Mike said you were beautiful, but . . .” She stepped forward, reached out—yet then stopped. “Is it okay? For me to hug you?”

  A lump had risen to Anna’s throat, seizing her voice, so she only nodded. And then Nancy Romo’s arms fell around her in a huge, crushing embrace—more crushing than she’d have thought the small woman capable of. And Anna hugged her back and soon felt her new father join the embrace as well.

  Both of them were crying, her new parents, and for Anna, it was one more unreal moment in a long string of them that had begun the night her mother died, the night her mother had said the words she could still hear echoing through her brain. You’re not who you think. You’re not really mine. And now she felt bad because the people holding her were in tears, and they loved her, and they’d missed her for so incredibly long, and she couldn’t return the love they felt because she didn’t even know them. Walls. She was so used to putting up walls to protect herself.

  But still she stood between them, soaking up their emotions for her, and she realized that it didn’t feel odd to have these two strangers hugging her. It didn’t feel weird at all. And she began to understand that deep down inside, she did feel a connection to them. Already. Or maybe . . . always?

  And without quite knowing what was happening, tears began to roll down her cheeks, too. For the lost life with these people that she would never know, never recover, never get back. For all the years and love she’d missed. For all the pain they’d suffered because of her. And though this wasn’t going to be easy, maybe Logan was right—maybe she belonged here.

  After that came the slightly awkward moment of separating, and reaching for tissues, and the slightly embarrassed laughter that somehow put her at ease to be standing around crying and wiping her eyes with people she didn’t know even though they’d given birth to her.

  But it wasn’t over yet—because that was when she made eye contact with the largest guy in the room, whose eyes yet looked unaccountably gentle. It was her other brother, Lucky. His hair was long and his arms covered with tattoos, and sh
e knew from Mike that, though he was now settling down and getting married, he’d once been in an outlaw biker gang in California. And so he should have maybe scared her a little. But the truth was, she felt immediately drawn to him, immediately safe with him, and . . . and as if somehow she maybe almost remembered him. “Lucky,” she said softly when he looked too shy to speak.

  He nodded, swallowed visibly, and said, “Yeah.” And this time, on gut instinct, she was the one to initiate the hug, surprised once more to discover how right and pure it felt to be in his burly embrace.

  And after a long, warm moment, he whispered in her ear, “I’m so glad you’re home now. I have your name on my chest.”

  And it struck her as an awkward thing to say, and yet the earnestness in his voice negated that, along with finding out that this man holding her now had tattooed the memory of her onto his skin, that she’d been that important to him. As more tears threatened, she pulled back to say, “Can I see?”

  And though he looked a bit sheepish doing it, Lucky reached down to peel the black T-shirt he wore upward over a well-muscled stomach and chest until she saw two names tattooed in dark script across his flesh: Tessa’s and her own. And for some reason, seeing it there made her cry a little more. And more tissues were handed around, and more nervous laughter resonated until finally Mike said, “Lasagna’s done, so let’s eat.”

  The meal, to her surprise, was easier. Being an only child of a working single parent, Anna had spent her fair share of time at friends’ houses, with their families, and this felt like that. It was easy to sit and listen to them talk, and she found she liked drinking in the cadence of their voices, hearing how they interacted with each other. Sometimes they asked her questions, but thankfully it was simple stuff.

  “Anna,” her new mother said, “I haven’t even asked—where do you work? What do you do?”

  “I have a degree in hotel management,” she explained, “and I’ve been with the Hyatt chain since before I was out of college. But I’m taking some time off right now.” The truth was, she’d resigned. Her mother’s death had brought her a surprising inheritance, passed down from Claudia Karras’s parents and saved for Anna—it was way more than enough to buy her dream car and to take some time away from work. Not that she’d ever expected that she’d want or need so much time away. But her mother’s deathbed confession had turned her world upside down. And the car indulgence . . . well, she could blame that on temporary insanity, but the fact was, she didn’t regret it—she loved her Mustang.

  “That sounds like a fun job,” Rachel told her. “Were you at the Hyatt downtown in Indy? My ad firm, before I moved back to Destiny, was just around the corner from there.”

  It had been nice to discover Rachel had lived in Indianapolis for most of her adult life. “Yes, I was,” Anna replied.

  “And where did you go to school, dear?” her new mom asked.

  “The University of Indiana. It allowed me to live at home and take care of—” Okay, maybe these questions weren’t so easy after all.

  But her new dad—not that she’d ever had an old one—immediately put her at ease, even reaching to touch her hand where it absently held her fork near the edge of her plate. “It’s all right, Anna. Really.”

  Yet she’d accidentally brought up an unpleasant subject. “Well, it allowed me to take care of . . . my mom. My other mom.” God, her stomach pinched saying it—no matter how you sliced it, it was still awkward.

  “She . . . wasn’t well?” her father asked.

  And then Anna did her best to explain. About the nervous breakdowns and the occasional psychotic breaks. She didn’t like discussing it; she didn’t like remembering how it had forced her to be the grown-up in the house long before she should have had to take on that role—but . . . “I hope maybe that can help you all to . . . forgive her, just a little. Or at least understand. I’ve struggled with that myself since her death, and I still harbor a lot of anger, but . . . she raised me, and she loved me, and she never meant to hurt anyone.”

  Everyone stayed silent after that, and she realized it was far, far too soon to be asking anything like forgiveness of them and she wished she hadn’t gone there. And she found she wasn’t quite able to meet anyone’s eyes in that exact moment—well, except for Logan’s, who sat across the table from her. Her gaze stopped there and, like before, she felt she had a friend in him.

  And maybe something more.

  “Well, the lasagna was great, Rachel,” Logan said with a big smile.

  Which spurred happy conversation and thankfully ended the awkwardness Anna had created. “From Grandma Romo’s recipe,” Rachel said.

  Anna’s new mother told her, “You’ve really got it down, Rachel. It took me years to make it just like hers.”

  And while that was going on, Anna kept her eyes on Logan and mouthed the words, Thank you.

  Once dinner was over, everyone gathered in the living room to look at family pictures. Which all seemed good and easy and fine until they began showing her the ones of her as a little girl. She’d never seen herself so young. “My mother told me all my baby pictures were lost in a fire,” she said softly as she reached down, running her fingertips over one of the photos of her in a white Easter dress. Maybe she was trying to connect with it that way, feel it, remember it. God, she looked so happy.

  And then she turned the page of the photo album in her lap to find snapshots of her with her two older brothers, both of them looking so protective of her—and she gasped. Because . . . “I think I remember.”

  “What do you remember?” Mike asked. He sat by her side, almost hovering, the way he had ever since they’d met yesterday. He hadn’t even really wanted to leave to go meet their parents this afternoon.

  She met his gaze, so close—and again, so much like her own—and swallowed back the lump in her throat before she said, “You. And Lucky. Just a little.”

  She’d had the vague notion of recollection about them both before, but this was more. She stared off before her without really seeing anything in the room for a moment, trying to go back in time, trying to recall. “I think . . . I used to ask my mother about you both. I think I called you Mikey and Lucky.”

  “You’re kind of how I ended up with the nickname,” Lucky told her from where he sat perched on the arm of the couch. “Mike called me ‘lucky’ one night because I kept beating him at board games, and it stuck with you for some reason. You called me that over and over until everybody else did, too.”

  She smiled, liking that idea—that in her short time with this family she’d given them one small thing that had lasted besides heartache and pain—but then she went back into the memory to say, “She told me you were imaginary friends. Imaginary,” she repeated—and then she burst into fresh tears of anger she couldn’t push down. “But you weren’t imaginary at all. You were real, and you were here all the time, and she took me from you.”

  And then Mike was hugging her, and she was letting him, even turning her face inward against his shoulder, suddenly ready to let him protect her again—just a bit, even if he did like to hover.

  By the end of the evening, Anna was exhausted. And the truth was, she didn’t quite know how to feel. Warmly welcomed—or, again, overwhelmed. She’d been told there were lots more Romo relatives who would want to see her soon, and someone suggested having a big party to welcome her home to Destiny. Which sounded very nice . . . but also intimidating. Who wanted that kind of attention? It’d be different if she’d done something great—won an award, written a book, saved a child—but who wanted to be the center of attention for being abducted twenty-five years ago? “I’m . . . not sure I’d be up for that,” she admitted.

  Despite the fact that Mike and Rachel had plenty of bedrooms—they lived in the same family house where Anna had lived, too, when she was little—their parents had decided to stay in a motel in Crestview, the next town over and the closest place with accommodations, probably because they didn’t want to crowd Anna too much, which she
appreciated. But that meant very long goodnight hugs at the door and a few more emotions and tears. And before they even left, Anna excused herself to go to the bathroom. She didn’t really need to go—she just needed a quiet moment to wrap her head around all that had taken place tonight.

  As she glanced in the mirror, though, she felt still more tears gathering behind her eyes. And she crushed them shut, but—damn it—it was too late. Grabbing for a tissue, she blotted away the wetness, tried to pull herself back together.

  She was leaning against a wall in the hallway a minute later, just out of view, still dabbing gingerly at the corners of her eyes, when she looked up to find Logan.

  “Hey, you okay?” he asked.

  She let out a sigh, bummed to be caught looking weepy again, yet gave him a nod. “Yeah. I guess. Just . . . kind of overwhelmed, I suppose. Needed a minute.”

  And she could tell he had indeed noticed the tissue in her hand and knew it meant she’d been crying. “I can imagine,” he replied, his voice soothing. “I just wanted to check on you when I saw you head in this direction, but I’ll leave you to yourself.”

  Though when he turned to go, she reached out, latched onto his wrist. Despite everything else going on, she’d stayed aware of him all night, and of the strange comfort his presence continued to bring her. So now it just seemed natural to say, “Thank you for being here. I realize I barely know you, but it helps.”

  “Glad to,” he told her, his blue eyes sparkling on her. Then he tilted his head. “Hey, any chance you remember me from when you were little?”

  She tried to think back, but the memories were so few, and so very hazy. Though it made her kind of sad to shake her head and say, “No. I’m afraid I don’t. Wish I did.”

  He shrugged. “I just wondered because you used to follow me around. You liked me a lot back then,” he added on a laugh.

  She didn’t hesitate to say, “I like you a lot now, too.” And then she followed one more instinct—to reach up and give him a hug.