Where the Heart May Lead: A Clean Romance (Harlequin LP Heartwarming)

by Elizabeth Mowers

  “Who? You?” Mara spat as Paige scrambled after her. “All this time? It was you?”

  “Please, listen,” Paige begged as Mara’s eyes flashed brilliant. “I love Lucy. I don’t want anything to happen to her—”

  “You heard me cry to Charlie and all this time it was you? Dr. Hathaway’s phone call just as Charlie met you... I never suspected a thing...and all this time...”

  “Mara, I don’t want to hurt Lucy, but her birth father...a man named Jared Thorne... I think he’s here... I’m so sorry.” Paige reached to touch Mara’s arm, but Mara jerked back.

  “Get away from me!” she shrieked, eliciting dozens of nearby people to turn in alarm. “Where is she? Lucy!” Mara stumbled in the general direction of Lucy, frantically searching for her daughter.

  “Mara, I’ll help you,” Paige called, struggling to keep her footing in the sand as she followed. Mara’s slim frame somehow managed to part the crowd, as if her maternal instinct to get to her daughter had empowered her with a supernatural force. Happy-go-lucky faces blurred in front of Paige, the smell of sunscreen and hot dogs and lake water swirling around her in a dizzying array. She was only a few steps behind when Mara reached the startled little girl. Without an explanation, she tugged Lucy in the direction of the sports shop.

  “Mom? What is it? I haven’t bought my hot dog yet.”

  “Mara,” Paige called, running alongside them. “I need to tell you about Thorne—”

  “Shut up,” Mara snapped. “Get away from us. Get away from Lucy.” Lucy looked back, her frightened emerald eyes bobbing before Mara tugged her to face forward. Paige fell away, letting the gap between them grow with each passing second. It had all gone so wrong so quickly. Things were going to fall apart now, and it was all her fault.

  * * *

  CHARLIE RANG UP one of many customers standing in line. The Water Dancers’ show was always good for business, drumming up steady foot traffic until closing time, but with each slam of the cash register drawer, he hated all of it. He needed to be somewhere else.

  “Want some help?” Peter asked, shuffling in from the back. Charlie nodded as the bell over the front door rang, signaling yet another customer. This time, however, when he looked up, Tully was in the doorway. His face was solemn, darkened even, and Charlie knew he needed to leave.

  “Take over, Peter,” he said, as Tully led him outside. “What is it, Tully? Don’t tell me you ran her name.”

  “I didn’t have to. A person of interest report came in for her.”

  “Person of interest? For what?”

  Tully shook his head. “Brace yourself, Charlie.”

  “For what?” His gut twisted as he prepared for the answer.

  “Kidnapping.”

  Charlie teetered back on his heels, the word socking him in the jaw like a sucker punch. Tully readjusted his hand on his belt buckle, waiting for the sudden shock to pass.

  “You mean...kidnapping Lucy?” Charlie finally managed.

  “Looks that way. Her supposed birth father came into the station. He’s an odd-looking son of a gun but his story adds up. The timeline, Lucy’s age...it doesn’t look good.”

  “At worst I thought—” What did he think? That Paige was Lucy’s birth mother coming to see her after all these years? That possibility had been palatable because he thought Paige to be so loving and kind. Even as he had suspected it this afternoon, he believed she wouldn’t do anything to pull Lucy from her family, from him and Peter and Mara. He didn’t think she’d endanger Lucy in any way. But now...with a birth father in the picture and kidnapping charges surfacing...

  “Do you know where she is? I have to pick her up for questioning.”

  Charlie shook his head, though he knew the first place he’d check—alone. “I have to find her,” Charlie mumbled, running a hand through his hair.

  “Don’t warn her, Charlie. She’s not worth it. If she’s done what this guy claims she’s done...”

  Charlie managed a nod. All he knew was that he needed the entire truth from Paige this time, because his niece’s future and well-being hung in the balance.

  * * *

  PAIGE STUMBLED ALONG the beach, letting the cheers of the crowd fade into the distance with each passing step. Her car was packed. She knew what she should do—leave town and never look back. But as she watched the skiers skim across the lake, like shiny, gold water bugs, all she could think of was Charlie. How could she leave without giving him an explanation? He had trusted her to tell him the truth. After Crystal had broken his heart, he had chosen to trust her now. She knew a man like that didn’t come along every day, nor did she fall in love every day.

  Paige had just turned toward the public access road to head back toward the shop when she spotted him.

  Thorne.

  His coal-black eyes were unmistakable, even from thirty yards away, and they were marked for her at an alarming pace. Paige tried to swallow but her throat had gone bone-dry. The crowd, so happily cheering on the ski show, wouldn’t come to her aid if she needed it.

  She had only known Thorne for a few months, but it had been enough time for her to predict what he’d do next. He’d want to know where Lucy was, and by the look in his eye, she knew she’d no sooner waft off a bloodhound than get rid of him now. He felt he had a claim over Lucy, and no one would convince him otherwise. She was stronger than the teenager who’d faced him ten years ago and better capable of confronting him, but she still wished she didn’t have to, especially alone.

  A truck rumbling from behind Thorne made him break his focus on Paige. It sped alongside him, up the public access road to the beach, sputtering gravel as it passed by him.

  Charlie.

  “Get in,” he called, but Paige had already broken for the passenger door. Charlie cut a U-turn and aimed them for town. “I take it that’s him,” he said once Thorne was a dot in Paige’s side mirror.

  Paige confirmed it with only a blink. She wondered how much Charlie knew. As Charlie drove in silence, Paige scrambled to piece together the timeline since Mara had run off with Lucy. She couldn’t have gotten back to the shop and explained it this quickly. For Charlie to know anything about Thorne, Tully would have had to tell him.

  “Did you talk to Tully?” she asked as Charlie made a turn through a woodsy area just outside of town.

  “He wants to see you at the police station,” he muttered. “You’re listed as a person of interest for kidnapping, but you must already know that by now.” He pulled into a small picnic area, a remote nook tucked within mature aspen trees. Aside from an aged picnic table and a staked sign for a trail leading farther into the woods, it looked untouched. Charlie cut the engine and eased out of the truck. He made his way to the picnic table, and she knew he was waiting for her. He wanted an explanation, and she’d have to confess all of it now. It was time.

  Paige slipped from the truck and drew a deep breath. Straightening her shoulders, she perched on the picnic table beside Charlie.

  “I’m not sure where to start,” she said matter-of-factly. Charlie snorted and faced her.

  “Start at the beginning. I think I deserve it, don’t you?” He did. She wanted to.

  Charlie leaned into her line of vision, his eyes cutting straight to her heart. He looked like he was biting back fury toward her. Maybe he was furious at her or maybe he was furious to be put into a situation where Lucy’s future was jeopardized. She didn’t blame him for the fire behind his eyes. She hated it, but she didn’t blame him.

  “I’ll tell you everything, Charlie.”

  “Are you Lucy’s birth mother?”

  Paige swallowed hard. She needed him to understand why she’d done it. She needed him to understand what she had dreamed of for Lucy, so she took a breath and spoke the first of many truths.

  “No. I’m not her birth mother.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

&
nbsp; CHARLIE NEARLY FELL off the picnic table as the fierceness of her eyes locked on his.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, grabbing the back of his neck. “If you’re not her birth mother then who are you? And how did you know her father was coming for her?”

  Paige nodded as if they were all good questions.

  “As you know, my mother, Trudy, had a host of problems. For one, she was an addict. For another, she had undiagnosed mental health problems that were never treated. They were probably the reason she began using in the first place. And as you already know, I was raised by my grandmother, who was the last stronghold of discipline and foundation in my mother’s life. When she died, my Aunt Joan, Trudy’s twin sister, and Uncle Craig tried to take me. They knew Trudy was toxic, but before they could make their way to Tennessee—that’s where we lived at the time—Trudy had whisked me off.”

  “She and your aunt were twins?”

  “Joan and Gertrude. My grandmother always said they were as different as salt and sugar. Looking back, I now understand how things went off the rails for her, but as a teenager, what could I do about it? She wouldn’t accept help or guidance from my grandmother when she was alive, and she refused to listen to my Aunt Joan when Grandma died. When I think of how things might have been different...”

  “Go on,” Charlie said, detecting the guilt and desperation in Paige’s voice. “What happened when Trudy took you?” Out of instinct, he touched her hand to encourage her along. The anger that had been brewing on the drive to find her was suppressed for now. For the moment, he wanted to help her tell her story. He wanted answers and he could tell when Paige blinked at his touch, she wanted to set down the secrets she’d been carrying for years.

  “Trudy couldn’t keep a job to support us. She...oh, Charlie... I’m not exactly sure what she did for money.” She looked away as if the shame of it all had been hers. “Every now and then we’d end up crashing with so-called friends who had a working phone. I’d try calling my aunt to tell her where I was, but sometimes I wasn’t exactly sure. We moved so much, sometimes in the middle of the night. We’d catch rides with people we didn’t know. It was awful.”

  “Were you ever...hurt?”

  Paige met his eyes. Hers widened as she violently shook her head. “No. Despite all the unsavory characters Trudy introduced into my life and our transient lifestyle, I was never physically hurt.”

  He managed a grateful expression. He could only imagine what a life like that would have been like for her. As he thought back on the woman he’d come to know over the last few days, he wondered how she had grown into a person of such love and kindness, someone so concerned for her aunt and uncle and tender and sincere with him.

  “Just after I turned seventeen, Trudy got into a terrible fight with one of her friends. She swiped his car keys so we would have a place to sleep that night. I figured the police would come looking for the stolen car and then call my aunt, but the next day we met Thorne. And let me tell you, I hated him from the moment I laid eyes on him.”

  “He was the man on the beach?”

  “He hasn’t changed much. Eyes as dark and deep as black holes, an untamed mass of hair and an unwavering belief that he is special.”

  Charlie frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Paige rubbed her temples as if there was so much to explain, and she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “Just keep going,” Charlie said softly.

  “Thorne offered us a ride to his Oklahoma homestead. It was a hike from where we were living in northern Tennessee, but my mother excitedly accepted. He promised a beautiful place where he said, we would be treated like the queens we were. He had a thing about people who were special.”

  “Did he think you were special?”

  “He thought my mother was. She was a twin, remember?”

  “And that was good?”

  “It was to him. He had a lot of ideas about where to find special people, and whenever he told my mother she was one of them, she’d fawn all over him. I tried to stop her from going with him, but she wouldn’t listen. I was scared for her, Charlie. I knew if she left with him, I’d never see her again, so I went along too. Thorne had been in Tennessee recruiting new followers to live at his homestead. Unfortunately, he had found us.

  “He didn’t believe in any conventional methods of doing anything, so there was no sort of official marriage ceremony between him and my mother. But it didn’t take long for the people of the homestead to understand he and Trudy were a couple.”

  Charlie grimaced. “This sounds like a cult, Paige.” She closed her eyes and he immediately realized he’d touched a nerve. “Did you live in a cult?”

  “For several months. Just long enough, in fact, for my mother to start showing.”

  “Pregnant?”

  Paige nodded sadly. “Thorne was ecstatic, but I knew we had to get out of there as soon as possible. I tried to convince my mother to leave with me, but she refused. They only had one phone at the homestead, and I wasn’t permitted to use it so I couldn’t call my aunt. Any thoughts I entertained about leaving on my own felt selfish. How could I leave my mother pregnant and with Thorne? What choice did I have? I had to either leave without my mother or stay and try to protect her.”

  “So, you stayed,” Charlie said gently.

  “She might have made a lot of bad decisions over the years, but she was still my mother. I still loved her.”

  Charlie nodded. Of course, she wouldn’t leave her mother. The conviction of her words reminded him of the woman he’d been getting to know the last few days. She had acted out of love. That much was still consistent.

  “Thorne didn’t believe in conventional medication or hospitals or help of any kind. When a woman went into labor...well...she’d better trust she could pull it off on her own. My mother, unfortunately, couldn’t. I don’t know what went wrong or what killed her, but she died the day after giving birth.” Paige stared intently at Charlie. “Her baby girl survived.”

  Charlie’s face contorted. “Is Lucy your half sister?”

  Paige nodded. “Haven’t you noticed we share the same green eyes?”

  Charlie recalled the moment he’d seen the familiarity in her face. There was plenty that wasn’t the same but those eyes... Once he had seen the similarity, he couldn’t understand how it had taken him so long.

  “They’re unlike any I’ve ever seen.”

  Paige smiled at this. “My grandmother told me her mother and grandmother had had them too. In fact, the color has been passed down to the women in my family for generations, including Trudy and Joan. I’m sure Trudy’s eyes helped convince Thorne we were some of the ‘special’ people he was searching for.”

  “They’re rare and so green,” he said.

  “The rarest,” Paige sighed as if recalling some link to a past she missed. “With my mother gone I knew I was in deep trouble. The homestead was locked and loosely guarded. It was also in the middle of nowhere. If I took off running, I wasn’t sure where the heck I would go. And with a baby.

  “I told Thorne I wanted Joan present for my mother’s funeral. He hated the idea of inviting anyone to the homestead he hadn’t yet vetted. So I lied and said that not only was my aunt a perfect resemblance of my mother, but she was also single.”

  “He let you call her?”

  “That same day. She said she would be there, alone, in two days. I was able to talk in code, saying over and over how Thorne was letting her come because she was single, and he wanted to meet her. She figured out quickly that something was very wrong. Uncle Craig came too and dropped her off at a nearby bus station where Thorne picked her up. When I think of how much faith Uncle Craig must have had to drop off his wife, not knowing exactly what she was walking into...”

  “He did it for you.”

  “They both did. He’s a good man, and he loves me. Joan is the strongest woman I
think I’ve ever met. She was Trudy’s complete opposite, in nearly every imaginable way.”

  “Why didn’t they call the police?”

  “They could have, and the police would have helped me leave, but what about Lucy? She was Thorne’s baby, not mine. We only had one shot to get the both of us out of there.

  “When Joan arrived, Thorne wouldn’t leave us alone, and if he had to duck out for even a minute, he made sure we had other people there as our chaperones. He hadn’t wanted to tell Joan about Lucy, but I made sure to mention on the phone that Trudy had died in childbirth. She needed to understand ahead of time why I hadn’t left the homestead. I needed her to understand that she wasn’t coming for just me.

  “Joan convinced Thorne she wanted to live at the compound too to help take care of me and the baby. Then she lied and said she had children of her own, who she’d left with friends. She said she wanted to return home and bring them to the compound.”

  “Thorne let her go?”

  “Joan was very convincing. You can sell anything to anyone if the people you love are in danger.”

  Charlie bit his tongue at this, wondering what exactly Paige had been able to sell to him over the past few days. He admired her levelheaded thinking and determination to escape the homestead, but any trace of deceit in her brought back too many old feelings from when Crystal had fooled him. He knew the situations were entirely different—Crystal’s fueled by selfishness and Paige’s fueled by selflessness, but still...

  “Are you okay?” she whispered, noticing he’d turned away.

  “I’m having a hard time with this. To know this was Lucy’s beginning and that you were involved in such a creepy world...”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all of this earlier, but can’t you understand how I couldn’t? It’s not something I could tell in pieces—to begin talking would mean I’d have to tell it all. There’s no option for in between. Aunt Joan and Uncle Craig and I promised never to mention anything about Lucy ever again because the mere mention of her name could risk her safety. I would do anything to keep her from going back to Thorne.”