Johnny Mack chuckled. He had been
such a cocky SOB. A white trash rounder who hadn't had sense enough to
stay where he belonged. The ladies on Magnolia Avenue had been Off Limits
to him, but he hadn't let that stop him. He had sampled the delights of the
rich, pampered, spoiled debutantes- and a few of their mamas, too. But
he had drawn the line at bedding Mary Martha because he'd known she might
be his half sister. Even a bad boy like him had had his principles, few
that they were. And even a guy who had prided himself on screwing his way
through the country club set had known true quality when he had seen it,
when he'd touched it, when he'd loved it. And in his way, he had loved Lane.
God, he had worshiped Lane!
She had represented everything
he had wanted, everything that was good and kind and genteel. Breeding
and character and a gentle heart. He had known that she was far too good
for the likes of him. But hell, she had been way too good for Kent Graham,
too. So why had she married the sorry son of a bitch? The thought of Kent
even touching Lane made him sick.
With her mind a jumbled mass of
confusion, Lane escaped to the rose garden behind the house. She gazed
up at the night sky as memories long buried deep in her heart resurfaced.
Johnny Mack was back in town! Dear Lord, what was she going to do? She had
truly believed that she would never see him again, that he would never
return to Noble's Crossing.
Will hated Johnny Mack. Kent had seen
to that with his vile, vindictive ranting, giving her son the worst possible
scenario of Johnny Mack's life from birth to twenty-one. She had known Kent
could be cruel, but until he had tried to destroy Will with his bitter
hatred, she hadn't realized just how cruel her ex-husband could be.
God forgive her, she had wanted
Kent dead. And thoughts of killing him had crossed her mind. But except to
protect herself or Will, she never could have taken Kent's worthless
life. But someone else had done the deed for her. Someone who hated
Kent even more than she did. Someone who had been pushed over the edge.
Her greatest fear was that Will
had murdered Kent. When she had found her son, dazed and confused, standing
over Kent's body, she had decided then and there that she would protect
her child, no matter what the cost to herself. She was as much at fault as
Kent or Sharon or Lillie Mae. She had been a perpetrator in the great hoax.
Every day of her married life, she had lied to her husband.
I did it for Will.
And for yourself, her conscience
reminded her. You wanted Johnny Mack's child. You would have done anything
to have prevented Sharon from aborting his baby.
If only she could go back fifteen
years. No, she would have to go back farther than that. Back nineteen
years. Back to when she was fourteen. Back to the first moment she laid
eyes on Johnny Mack Cahill.
But what good would going back in
time do? Would it change the fact that she had fallen head over heels in
love, the way only a young girl can? No, of course it wouldn't change the
inevitable. Nothing short of an act of God could have prevented her
from loving Johnny Mack. She hadn't chosen to love the town bad boy, the womanizing
hell-raiser to whom she had been nothing more than a friend.
"You're the only girl I've ever
been just friends with," he had told her. And that admission had broken
her young heart. She had wanted to be so much more than his friend. She
had foolishly longed to be the love of his life.
Without even realizing what she
had done, Lane found herself moving along the path that led from her mother's
flower garden down to the old boat-house and pier on the river. How many
hours had she spent in that boathouse, sitting on the deck of her daddy's
small yacht with Johnny Mack? Alone. Secluded from the outside world. Talking,
laughing and falling more and more in love with him.
She could not-would not!-allow those
old feelings to rise from the ashes. She had burned her bridges years
ago, when she'd finally realized that the price she had paid for loving
Johnny Mack had been too high. In the beginning, every time Kent touched
her, she had tried to pretend he was Johnny Mack. The fantasy had been a
dismal failure. Eventually she had grown to hate Johnny Mack even more
than she despised Kent.
The moment he saw the shadowy figure
moving toward the boathouse, he knew who it was. She hadn't been able to
stay away any more than he had. They had both been drawn back to the place
where they'd spent so many happy hours. By the river. Fishing from the pier.
Private moments inside the boathouse.
"I thought you'd come here,"
he said.
'’Johnny Mack?"
The voice of the past. The voice
he had never been able to get out of his head. Lane's sweet, rich, honey-coated
Alabama drawl.
"Over here." He stepped
out from beneath a sheltering willow and allowed the moon's glow to spotlight
him.
"What are you doing here?"
she asked.
"I could ask you the same question."
"I had to get out of the house,"
she admitted. "Your showing up out of the blue the way you did… Why
didn't you just stay away? The last thing my son needs right now is to have
to deal with you."
"Somebody thought your son needed
me."
Lane hesitated on the pier at
the edge of the boat-house, half in shadows. "Lillie Mae sent you the
note."
"Ah… makes sense." He
walked toward Lane slowly, giving her time to meet him halfway.
He could sense her uncertainty,
could feel her fear. What was she afraid of? Surely not of him. He paused
and waited, allowing her to step out of the murky, blue-black shadows. When
she did, he sucked in a deep breath. Up at the house an hour ago, he had
realized that Lane had grown up to be a beautiful woman. But in the
brightly lit foyer, with Lillie Mae and the boy close by, he hadn't allowed
himself to appreciate that loveliness. But now, alone together, with
only the sticky summer breeze and the swaying willows as witnesses, he
drank his fill of her.
He remembered her curly brown hair
being waist-length and how sometimes when he had thought of her, he fantasized
about that glorious mane of hair. But she had not only cut her hair so
that the tips barely touched her shoulders, but she had lightened it to
a dark blond. The slight plumpness which had plagued her from childhood
through adolescence had melted away into mature, feminine curves.
And those luminous blue eyes, which had once been so filled with life
and love, were now hooded and wary and staring at him pleadingly.
"I told you that you didn't have
to be afraid of me," he said. "I didn't come back to Noble's
Crossing to hurt you, to cause problems for you."
She took another tentative step
toward him. "Why did you come back? Why after all these years would
you care about… about me or anyone else in Noble's Crossing?"
"I owe you my life. Of course
I care about you, about the fact that you're the prime suspect in Kent's
murder." Raking his hand across his mouth as if to wipe away a bitter
taste, Johnny Mack glared at Lane. "Why the hell did you marry Kent Graham?"
Lane's chest rose and fell with
each labored breath she took. Thrusting out her chin, she looked directly
at Johnny Mack. "I married him so that I could adopt Will."
Anger and pain blended with love
and strength, wrapping the combined emotions around her words. She had made
a declaration, her statement seeming to dare him to question her motivation.
But it was more what she had not said than what she had that ripped at
Johnny Mack's guts. Although she hadn't spoken the accusation aloud,
he had heard it in the tone of her voice. If you had taken me with you, I
never would have married Kent. Or was he wrong? Had he heard what he wanted
to hear, assumed what he wanted to believe?
''I hired a private investigator
to dig up information on Will," Johnny Mack told her. "I know
that his birth certificate-his original birth certificate-states
that Sharon Hickman was his mother and Kent Graham was his father."
Lane's eyes opened wide. Her lips
parted slightly on an indrawn breath. "How is it possible that your
investigator got hold of a copy of Will's original birth certificate?"
"Don't you know by now that if
you've got enough money, you can buy just about anything you want?"
Enjoying the shocked look on Lane's face made him feel like a real bastard.
But he couldn't help wondering just how much more pleasure he would feel
when he saw the reaction of people he hated-people like Miss Edith!
"And do you have a great deal
of money?" Lane asked.
"Enough to get whatever I
want.'' That was a laugh. Yeah, he could have anything money could
buy. And there had been a time when that would have been enough for him,
when it had been all he wanted. But in the past few years, he had come to
realize there were a few things all the money in the world couldn't buy.
"And just what do you want,
Johnny Mack?"
"The truth," he said.
"Is Will Kent's son or is he mine?"
Lane lowered her lashes and averted
her gaze.' 'Will is my son! He's been mine since the first moment I held
him."
She was like a tigress, claws extended,
teeth bared, ready to strike out at any threat to her cub. Johnny Mack had
never known a mother's love, never felt sheltered and protected by the
woman who had given birth to him. In an odd sort of way, he envied Will Graham.
What would he give to have a woman like Lane love him half that much?
"I know he's yours. I'm not
disputing your claim on him. I just want to know-no, I need to know- the
truth. Is Will my son?"
Lane wrapped her arms around her
body, clasping her elbows. "What possible difference could it make
to you after all this time? For all you knew, you could have left behind
half a dozen women pregnant with your baby. You didn't care then. Why should
you care now?"
This wasn't the Lane he had known.
Sweet. Gentle. Innocent. There had been no anger, no hatred in that
girl. But hatred radiated from this woman. A hatred focused directly at
him.
Damn but the truth hurt. Hurt like
hell. Lane was right. Despite using condoms as a general rule, he still
could have left behind more than one pregnant woman that summer. And
even if he had known he'd gotten some girl pregnant, he would have left
Noble's Crossing anyway. He had been running for his life back then. Staying
in this town would have meant signing his own death warrant.
"Even if I'd cared, I could
hardly have stayed on," he said. "You know as well as I do that
when I hightailed it out of town, quite a few people thought I was dead."
"In all the years since you
left, you never wrote. You never called. When you said goodbye to me at
the bus station in Decatur, you cut all your ties to me and to Noble's
Crossing."
"And if I had called?" he
asked.
"You didn't."
"But if I had, would you have
told me about marrying Kent? About adopting Will?"
"There is no point in playing
'what if,' is there? Lillie Mae thought she was doing the right thing by
sending you that note, but she was wrong. There's nothing you can do for
me. And if you think I'll let you hurt Will any more than he's already been
hurt, then you'd better-"
"I'm not here to hurt
Will." Johnny Mack grabbed Lane's hands, which she had knotted into
tight fists. Her arms went stiff, her body rigid at the touch of his flesh
against hers. "Why do you hate me so much?"
He stroked the underside of her
wrist with his thumb. She shivered. He released her immediately, realizing
she was not only completely aware of him as a man, but that she was also
just a little bit afraid of him, too. God, she was the one person in this
town he didn't want to fear him!
"Tell me the truth," he said.
"Don't I deserve even that much?"
She turned her back on him, as if
looking at him was too painful. In a quiet, but amazingly strong voice,
she said, "Sharon came to me after you'd left town. She told me she
was pregnant and that you were the father."
Johnny Mack felt as if a hard fist
had just punched him in the gut and knocked all the air out of him. Will was
his son. Sometime during that long, hot summer fifteen years ago, he
had gotten Sharon pregnant. Maybe a condom had leaked. Maybe he had forgotten
to use one. Damn, he couldn't remember every time he'd screwed Sharon
that July. Back then, he had spent more time humping every willing female
than he had doing anything else. But he'd always kept a pack of condoms
handy.
"Why did she come to you? You
two weren't exactly best friends." Johnny Mack shifted his weight from
one foot to the other as he tried to rein in the anger boiling inside
him.
"She wanted to borrow money
from me for an abortion."
"Hmph! Sounds like Sharon.
She wouldn't have wanted to be saddled with a kid. So, why didn't you loan
her the money? It doesn't make any sense to me why you'd ruin your life
by marrying Kent and raising Sharon's child."
Lane closed her eyes as if trying
to blot out some horrible memory. Reflected moonlight caught in the teardrops
trickling down her cheeks.