The Gazebo

by Kimberly Cates

  The others mumbled, faded back between the cars, carrying shame seventeen years old with them. Jake hoped to hell they’d lose plenty of sleep over it tonight. But no guilt on their part would ever absolve Jake of his. Or of the deadly finality he saw in Deirdre’s eyes.

  She turned away from him and stumbled as Drew took her to his car.

  Jake stood, rooted to the spot, trying not to retch. Farrington had raped her body years ago, but Jake realized he’d just done something to wound Deirdre far worse.

  He’d betrayed her. Broken her trust. In spite of all the pretty promises, in spite of all the decent intentions, it was only a matter of time now before Emma learned the ugly truth about how she came to be. Because of Jake. Because of what Jake had done.

  He remembered Tank Rizzo’s face after he’d learned he’d killed another man.

  Jake had killed something now himself. Deirdre’s belief in the future he’d promised them both.

  She’d trusted him, and he’d broken that trust all to hell in this darkened parking lot. And she and Emma would pay. Grief and self-loathing wrenched Jake’s heart.

  Deirdre would never love him again.

  CHAPTER 20

  DREW PULLED HIS CAR UP in front of March Winds, the boy’s face seeming years younger than before, weighed down with confusion, outrage and empathy because of what he’d heard.

  Deirdre knew she should talk to him, but she couldn’t squeeze words through her throat, felt as if the tiniest sound would shatter her into a thousand pieces. Oh, God, how could Jake have done that? Betrayed her? Exposed the secret of Emma’s birth?

  She couldn’t shut out the image of the people clustered around the car, their ghastly faces, the way their eyes darted away, as if they couldn’t bear to look at her.

  “Ma’am,” Drew said softly, touching her arm. “You’re home.”

  But home had vanished with Jake’s love, with a future far too happy for a woman like Deirdre to share.

  Deirdre nodded. Opened the door. She should tell him thank-you. He’d had a shock in that parking lot, too.

  But she felt too brittle.

  “I…get it now,” Drew said, looking at her with painfilled eyes.“Why you were so…so mad the night Emma sneaked out. I’m sorry…for what that guy did to you. It was horrible, you know?”

  Deirdre swallowed hard. “I know.”

  “I just want you to know that, well, Emma won’t hear what happened from me. I swear it. You have to believe me. I wouldn’t ever hurt her like that.”

  The dam was cracking, agony pouring molten red through the breaks. “Drew,” Deirdre croaked. “I…”

  “I know,” he said, and Deirdre knew why Emma loved him, his soulful eyes filled with understanding.

  Deirdre had to get out of the car. She stumbled out onto the gravel drive, glad Emma had someone like that to love her, praying her little girl would never have to live through that sweet love’s stark betrayal, or have to try to keep breathing when her whole world was breaking apart.

  Oh, God, Deirdre thought. She had to get away. Run…where?

  A sliver of light flickered in the distance, Cade’s cabin window beckoning through the garden. But she’d lost the right to go to them, hadn’t she? She’d torn her family apart. Hurt them in ways that might never heal.

  But she’d felt hurt like this before, the tearing grief, the feeling that nothing in all the world would ever be right again. She closed her eyes, remembering Spot’s melting brown eyes, the day they fluttered closed forever.

  This hurt too deep to be alone, washing away everything but her need to feel arms around her, arms that knew how much it cost her to reach out for them when in such pain.

  Deirdre dashed her tears away with the back of her hand and ran—past the gazebo where she and Jake had almost made love, through the picket fence that had seemed like barbwire the past months, cutting her off from the one haven she’d been able to count on. Cade and Finn. The Captain and the twins. Her family.

  Deirdre ran to where they were waiting.

  An hour later she sat, curled into Cade’s big leather chair, her fingers clutching a glass of Glenmorangie, the whiskey warming her veins not half so much as the people surrounding her warmed her heart.

  Cade looked stricken, his handsome face pale, eyes filled with self-recrimination. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  The Captain glared at him, his warrior face savage. “Because she knew what you’d do, you hotheaded fool. Providing there was anything left of Farrington when I was done. There wouldn’t have been,” he said grimly. “I know where to hide the bodies.”

  “I…I didn’t want to tell you how…how stupid I’d been,” Deirdre confessed. “I was ashamed. I should have been able to fight him off. But the car seat was so small, and he was so big. I couldn’t…couldn’t move enough to matter.”

  Finn’s cheeks were wet with tears. “Neither one of you men will have to do anything,” she said, arms folded protectively over the child still in her belly. “I’ll kill this guy myself. Plead insanity. After all, I’m in hormone hell.”

  But it was the Captain who crossed to Deirdre, limping on legs still unsteady but growing stronger every day. He signaled to Cade and Finn. They slipped out of the room. Deirdre remembered how she once had dreaded being left alone with her father. She’d always feared they’d lose their tempers, kill each other. But she’d never seen this side of Martin McDaniel before.

  He looked so lost, so sad. “I wish I’d been a better father to you, girl,” he said. “The kind of man you could tell…tell everything to. You shouldn’t have had to carry this secret alone for all these years.”

  “It…it doesn’t matter anymore. Now you know.”

  The Captain’s craggy face twisted in fury and grief. “Too late to help you. But that’s always been the way of it with us, hasn’t it, Dee?”

  “I don’t…”

  “Don’t be making excuses for me. I’ve made plenty of my own over the years for why I couldn’t be the father you needed me to be. Maybe it’s time we both faced up to the truth.”

  Pain stripped Deirdre’s defenses bare. “I wasn’t an easy kid to love. I know that now. Mom always said…”

  Martin McDaniel’s face darkened, harsh with pain he had never let anyone see. “You know why she said that? What made you harder for Emmaline to love? You were like me. A real McDaniel, that’s what she’d say, rolling her eyes in exhaustion when she didn’t know what to do with you.”

  Martin’s face softened, so tender Deirdre’s throat burned. “You were such a brave little thing. Not afraid of anything on earth. It used to make me so proud, and then…scared me to death. It’s one thing to be father to a son who races into the world head-on at Mach 1. A few broken bones, a bunch of stitches, and he’d come out even tougher than before. But a girl…a daughter…” The Captain’s voice broke. “A man’s supposed to protect his daughter. All the women he loves. You can’t know how it feels in a man’s gut when he fails.”

  Deirdre wept as Jake’s haggard face rose in her memory, the anguish in his features, the determination in his eyes.

  Farrington was moving back to town. I couldn’t let him…didn’t mean for anyone else to know…

  “Deirdre—” Martin McDaniel scooped up her hand “—when I read that letter you found in the hope chest, all I saw was how badly I’d failed as a husband. As your father. I thought…it was only right to let you go…find someone maybe better.”

  “He wasn’t better, Daddy.” Deirdre confessed. “He was awful.”

  Her father’s mouth set, grim. “Big Jim Rivers will be a hell of a lot more cooperative next time you two chat.”

  Deirdre’s eyes widened. “You knew who he was all the time?”

  “Didn’t have a clue. Maybe I didn’t care enough even to notice that your mother…well, it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? She’s at peace. As for how I found Rivers, it’s simple enough. I made Emma promise to tell me the minute that private eye of yours
found the man. She’s a good girl, our Emma. Came over right away.” Thunder lowered on the Captain’s brow. “Told me what Stone said—that your father didn’t want you.”

  Deirdre couldn’t look at the Captain, pain a lifetime old slicing through her.

  Martin McDaniel’s voice broke. “Big Jim Rivers and I had a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting. I told him I don’t give a damn what he did with my wife. But I’ll break his goddamn neck if he ever hurts my little girl again. He’ll answer every one of your questions now. Real nice and gentlemanlike. That’s for sure.”

  Martin looked away, a little wistful. “He did love your mother, you know. After his fashion. He told that to me. Showed me this old picture he’d carried all these years. But then, I’m sure he’ll tell you about all of that for yourself when you go to see him.”

  “I don’t want to see him. Don’t want to speak to him ever again. I haven’t got any more questions for him. Because…well, after what you just told me, I know everything I needed to know.”

  “What’s that, little girl?”

  “It was Jake who…who made me remember. Something sweet. Something good. With the two of us. When Spot died. You remember?”

  The Captain looked away, his voice gruff. “Damn fool dog. Scared of the neighbor’s cat.”

  “If he were a marine, you always said, they’d have shot him by now.”

  The Captain shrugged, sheepish. “I suppose I did say that. I didn’t mean it, you know.”

  “I know. You cried when we buried him. You thought I didn’t see. When you held me and told me about your friend who died in battle. You said sometimes even the best soldiers cry.”

  “You were always a good soldier,” Martin said. “Too much like me. Scared the hell out of me. What would happen to you when your brother and I weren’t around to keep watch? Guess when you fell in the hangar that night and hurt yourself so bad, I knew something was wrong. Not just in your body, but in…in our family. Between your mom and Cade and you and me. She must’ve felt so guilty, having to face up to what she’d done years ago. And having Cade know.”

  “Cade thinks that’s what killed her,” Deirdre confided. “Him knowing the truth.”

  “Your mother made her own choices. I’ll tell that to your brother, too. Maybe now, years later, I understand better why she did what she did. I wasn’t the best husband for a woman like Emmaline. She was so gentlelike, fragile, you know? Like a flower. And I was a fighting man with blood on my hands and dark places inside me where I could never let my family go. I wasn’t the husband for your mother. And as a father for you, Deirdre, I didn’t do any better. Forgive me, honey, for letting you down. And know this one thing. I love you with all my heart. Maybe not the way you needed me to, but the only way I knew how.”

  Deirdre’s tears spilled over. “You’ve given me more than I needed, Daddy. Telling me tonight…I have a father who wants me.”

  “You’re pure McDaniel, little girl. In here.” He touched her heart. “You’re mine, all right. I never doubted it for a minute, that letter be damned.”

  Deirdre gently went into her father’s arms, mindful of how much thinner he felt, how precarious his balance. To her he still felt like the strongest man in the world.

  She closed her eyes, clinging to him, her voice still broken when she whispered.

  “What am I going to do, Daddy? What am I going to tell Emma?”

  Her father pulled back just a little, fierce eagle eyes peering down into hers. “The truth. Cade and Finn and I…we’ll be right here for both of you. But have a little faith in that girl you raised up. Emma’s stronger than you think. Takes after me, she does. Pure McDaniel, through and through.”

  Deirdre nodded, clinging to his wisdom, his strength. Reaching deep into her family to trust.

  Her father frowned. “It’s what happens after you settle this with Emma that I’m more worried about.”

  Dread tightened in Deirdre’s chest. “Why is that?”

  “You’ve got a man who loves you out there somewhere who made a McDaniel-size mistake.”

  “Jake?” Deirdre shook her head, disbelieving. “After what he did—How could I ever…”

  “Forgive him? I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this, little girl. I don’t want you ending up like I did. Filled up with nothing but anger and blame, facing the rest of your life alone. You can have better than I did, sweetheart, if you have the guts to take it.”

  “Daddy, you don’t understand.”

  “Don’t I?” Sadness filled his eyes, and she glimpsed a hundred broken dreams, vulnerabilities she knew he’d never shared. He was drawing them out for her, to show her things words alone could never explain. “You can’t take pride to bed, Deirdre,” he said softly, cupping her cheek. “It doesn’t keep you warm at night or make you laugh or give you babies to fill up the place Emma’s going to leave.”

  “You can’t…can’t really mean that. Expect me to…”

  “Oh, can’t I?” Her father caught her chin between his fingers and smiled into her face, his eyes filled with a love she’d never have to question again. “When it comes to you, Deirdre, I believe anything is possible. You’re my daughter, after all. And damned if we know when to quit.”

  EMMA CURLED UP beside Deirdre in the big bed where she’d shared so many childhood secrets, her heart-shaped face pale, her dark eyes brimming with tears. And Deirdre prayed that in telling her about the night Emma was conceived, she’d done the right thing.

  “I didn’t want you to find out the truth the way I did. From some…letter or some stranger, without me here to explain…”

  But how could anyone explain what had happened that night up on Sullivan’s Point? All day Sunday, Deirdre had warred with herself, trying to figure out what to do. And in spite of her father’s words, his offer of support from him, from Cade, from Finn, Deirdre had known this was one conversation that needed to be between just Emma and her.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so…so overprotective of you lately. But the thought of you ever going through what I did terrified me so much I went a little crazy.”

  “A little?” It was a weak joke, and yet it made Deirdre hope. “Maybe I never really asked about my dad because, well, I was scared it was something like this. I saw it in your eyes sometimes when guys came around wanting to date you. The only time that…great big sad wasn’t in your face was the past month or so, since Jake.”

  Jake. Just his name still had the power to hurt Deirdre, infuriate her, fill her with more loneliness than she’d ever imagined. What was she going to do about him? God, she wished she knew. The Captain’s voice kept whispering in her ear, making the future so bleak without him. But tonight was about Emma. Deirdre’s daughter needed all the strength and understanding her mother could give.

  “Emma, I never wanted you to know about any of this,” Deirdre said. “I thought I could protect you from…from, I don’t know, life. But your grandpa, he helped me to see that sometimes when life knocks you down, you get up stronger, and wiser. And sometimes when you’re sure that you’ve lost everything you ever wanted, you open your eyes and see that…that somewhere in all that ugliness, something beautiful broke through.”

  “I’m not a baby, Mom,” Emma said, looking heartbreakingly young. “You don’t have to try to make me feel better.”

  “I’m not, Emmaline Kate. I swear.”

  “Did Jake really…well, split the guy’s lip?” Emma asked.

  “And kicked in his car door,” Deirdre tried not to feel even a hint of satisfaction that Jake had. “But it wasn’t Jake’s right.”

  “Then whose was it?” Emma asked. “Somebody has to take care of you. You’re always having these delusions of grandeur, thinking you can take care of yourself.”

  Deirdre pulled back halfheartedly, playing their game of mock outrage. But tonight their old pattern fell flat. She finished it anyway, informing her daughter, “I’ve done just fine taking care of myself for the past sixteen years, thank you very much.”
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  “No. You haven’t.” Emma sobered, and for an instant Deirdre saw the ten-year-old waif she’d left behind, a fairy child who’d crashed to earth on a bewildered Cade’s doorstep. “You only let me love you. Everybody else you held away. Grandpa and Uncle Cade and Aunt Finn. Even them. But Jake…you let him in. It made me feel jealous and mad and then—” Emma faltered, fell silent.

  “Then what?” Deirdre urged.

  “All of a sudden I knew what you meant about hating Romeo and Juliet.”

  “What?” Deirdre shook herself, surprised into giving an exasperated laugh. “I can’t believe this, Emma, but somehow you managed to bring this whole emotional disaster back around to you standing in the middle of a stage.”

  “Well, I can’t help it. It fits, you know? I mean, before Romeo meets Juliet he’s dying of love for some other chick—that Rosalind, whoever the heck she is. And sure, with all the excitement of the masquerade ball and everything, he thinks Juliet’s his soul mate.”

  “Yeah. I remember that much. I read it in the Cliff’s Notes.”

  “Your question is what would have happened to all that star-crossed lover crap if they hadn’t died? A month later when Romeo had to take the garbage out of the castle and some pretty milkmaid walked past and blew him a kiss? Well then, I guess we’d get the real story.”

  “Emma, I’m not following this at all.”

  “Jake would never even see her, Mom. The milkmaid or Rosalind or even Catherine Zeta-Jones if she walked right down Main Street. In Jake’s eyes, there’s only you.”

  Deirdre tried to draw a steadying breath. It hurt too much. Pressed too hard on the place Jake had left behind. “Oh, Emma,” she said, shaken. “I’m not…after what happened…I don’t think I can…”

  “Mom, did you ever wonder why he did it?” Emma asked, her eyes big and soft and pleading. “I mean, why Jake went and beat up on that guy?”

  Bitterness still welled up in Deirdre’s throat. “His pride. He…”