Firefly Glen: Winter Baby (Harlequin Signature Select) (20 page)

She had changed, in these few weeks. She had grown. She had learned a lot about herself, and a lot about love.

She didn't love Ed, and a family without love was the worst life any mother could offer a child. And Ed, petty, vain, tyrannical Ed, would be the worst father, much worse than no father at all.

So it simply didn't matter what he had come to say. She would never, ever go back to him.

With at least that much of the burden lifted from her shoulders, she found herself able to walk up to him serenely.

“Hi,” she said politely. “I'm sorry I'm late.”

“Damn, Sarah.” Ed stared at his watch, as if he simply couldn't believe what the hands were telling him. “I've got a plane to catch. Won't you ever learn how to get anywhere on time?”

She looked at him evenly. “If you're short of time for this meeting, Ed, maybe you shouldn't waste any more of it complaining about how late I am.”

He did a small double take. She had never talked like that to him before. But he covered it quickly. She could almost watch the progression of thoughts across his handsome features. He wanted to be indignant, but he realized it wasn't prudent.

So that must mean he wanted something. He obviously didn't feel that he occupied the power position in whatever discussion he'd come here to have. Selfish need was the only thing that ever forced him to moderate his temper.

“Sorry,” he said with an obvious but not very successful attempt at being gracious. He gestured to one of the lounge tables. “Shall we sit down?”

She accepted the chair he held out for her. But he didn't sit right away himself. She thought he might be staring at her waistline. The dress she wore had, over the past few weeks, grown a little bit too tight. Soon she would have to buy maternity clothes.

But he wasn't. She followed his gaze, and she saw that he was clearly eyeing her noticeably larger breasts.

She found herself flushing with anger. She hated having his gaze on her. How had she ever tolerated his hands? Her stomach tightened, and she felt a brief, vicious return of the morning sickness she thought she'd left behind.

When he realized that she had caught him staring, he glanced away. “You look well,” he said awkwardly. “Are you?”

“Yes,” she said, setting aside her annoyance. “The morning sickness only lasted a few weeks. I'm fine now. I've seen a doctor up here. The baby is fine, too.”

He didn't respond. He just shifted in his seat and looked anywhere but at her, as if any mention of the baby made him uncomfortable. But she didn't allow herself the luxury of hating him, of despising his cold, selfish denial of this helpless child he had fathered.

She couldn't afford to think about that. She was determined to keep this civil. He had a right to know the basic details.

“I may have miscalculated the due date at first. The doctor up here says I'm about five months pregnant now. The baby will probably be born in June.”

He toyed with his napkin.

“Really,” he said, obviously struggling to say the right thing, strike the right attitude. “That's good. I guess.” He looked up, his eyes tense. “I'm sorry, but I still think you were wrong, deciding to go through
with it. It would have been so much simpler if you would just have—”

“Not for me,” she said with enough unyielding emphasis to make him look away again.

She leaned back in her chair and gazed at him steadily, amazed at how angry the suggestion could still make her. He had no concept of how real this baby had become to her, did he? To him, it was still a
problem,
a
thing.

“Ed, let's get to the point. Why are you here? You do know, don't you, that it's far too late now to be hoping I'll agree to any procedure.”

“Of course I know that.” He offered her his best half-profile, his most wounded expression. “God, Sarah. I'm not really a monster, you know.”

She let her silence speak for itself.

He flushed. “You've really turned into a bitch, haven't you? I saw this change starting in you even before we broke up. Once, at the beginning, you were such a sweet woman, Sarah. So easy to get along with.”

Once, at the beginning, she had been such a fool. So easy to push around. So grateful that a strong, steady man wanted to make a strong, steady life with her. So relieved that she was not going to end up like her mother, bouncing from one weak, faithless man to another like a marble in a pinball machine.

Ed had liked that needy, insecure woman just fine. What bully wouldn't?

But she didn't say any of that to him. What was
the point in needling each other? She just wanted to get this over with. It was giving her a headache.

“You know, I had hoped that when we met again you wouldn't be bitter, Sarah. I had hoped you might have taken time to see this from my perspective. To see how I've suffered, too, because of what's happened.” He tugged on his cuffs, sniffing slightly to show his disappointment. “But apparently I overestimated you.”

“No, I think you overestimated
yourself,
Ed. And your so-called suffering.”

He bristled, offended. He set his chiseled lips into an unforgiving line. Touching her aching temple with her fingers, Sarah sighed, sorry that she had risen to the bait yet again.

“Look,” she said quietly. “This is pointless. Why don't you just tell me why you've come to Firefly Glen?”

He tossed his napkin onto the table in a weary gesture of resignation. “Okay. Here's why. I want to know what it will take—” he paused “—to keep this quiet.”

She had been prepared for many things, but not this. She couldn't even be sure what he was talking about.

“To keep what quiet?” She narrowed her eyes, trying to figure it out. “I don't see how I can keep people from learning that I'm having a baby. A baby has a way of making itself known, especially after it's born.”

“No.” He tightened his mouth. “I mean my involvement. My involvement in your problem.”

She tilted her head. “I think you'd better be more specific,” she said carefully.

“All right.” He folded his hands on the table, the picture of rational male patience face-to-face with unreasonable female emotion. “What I want to know, Sarah, is exactly how much money it's going to take to make this problem go away for me. How much you are asking for your silence.”

She didn't trust herself to speak. She just looked at him, feeling a strange pity for the woman she used to be, all those light-years ago. How could she ever have been so weak as to think this man was strong?

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a long, narrow brown envelope. “I've had the papers drawn up. All that's left is to fill in the numbers and write the check.”

He finally noticed the look of quiet disgust on her face. Alarmed, he pulled out his most-reliable weapon. His charming, wheedling tone, the one she'd heard him use so many times with difficult parents.

“The truth is, I'm hoping to get married soon, Sarah,” he said with a boyish candor. “I've fallen in love. She's the most wonderful woman. But she's very young. Very innocent. She's the daughter of the chairman of the board. It's a terrific chance for me. If he—I mean,
she
—ever found out about you and me…”

He spread his hands, as if surely she could appreciate the dilemma. “It's a very high profile family. If
they find out that I have a pregnant ex-girlfriend who could show up at any moment, making headlines, causing trouble—”

Sarah almost laughed, but with effort she controlled herself. Did Ed have delusions of grandeur now—did he really think that their tawdry affair and illegitimate baby would make “headlines” anywhere in the world? They wouldn't even make headlines here in Firefly Glen.

“What is this wonderful woman's name?”

“Melissa,” he said cautiously. She noticed that he carefully omitted the last name. “Why do you ask?”

Without answering, Sarah took the envelope from his hands. She opened it and scanned the brief legal document that lay, in triplicate, within. It was almost obscenely simple. For
X
amount, Sarah Lennox absolved Ed McCutcheon of any responsibility for the child they had conceived.

Probably, she thought, she ought to turn it over to a lawyer. Most people would say that she was a fool. Here was her chance to take him for every cent she could get. Just scrawl in a few nice, round zeros after her favorite number and…

But she didn't want anything from Ed.

Except her freedom.

For extra convenience, the envelope even held a pen. She pulled it out, clicked it open and boldly wrote “One dollar” on the empty line. Then she signed her name, pulled off a copy for herself and handed the document back into Ed's limp, disbelieving hands.

He looked at the papers, then at her, with a kind of bewildered anxiety in his eyes, as if he suspected a trap.

“One dollar?”

“That's right.” She stood. “Don't just sit there with your mouth open, Ed. You're free. Put the dollar on the table. We'll leave it as a tip for the waitress. And then go on back to California.”

He kept frowning at the contract, turning it over again and again, as if he thought she might have used disappearing ink to scribble in some diabolical trick.

She began to walk away.

“Sarah, wait.” He caught her arm, stalling her. “Are you planning something? Why did you want to know Melissa's name?”

She looked down at his blunt-fingered hand, so alien now against her skin.

“Because,” she said, a cold distaste turning her voice to sheer ice. “I'll be mentioning the poor child in my prayers tonight. If she's really going to marry you, Ed, she's going to need all the help she can get.”

I
N THE CLEAR DELFT-BLUE SKY
overhead, the winter sun looked as pale and thin as a white dinner mint. But its appearance was deceptive. As the afternoon wore on, that anemic-looking sun managed to muscle the temperature up to almost fifty degrees.

The tourists took off their sweaters and tied them around their waists. Worried officials inspected the ice palace, checking for weak spots. The ice sculptors huddled in anxious clusters, fretting that their creations would not last the day.

The only people who welcomed the heat wave were the Firefly Glen United Charities volunteers, who stood shivering, waiting to make their heroic dip into the freezing water of Llewellyn's Lake.

Sarah didn't care about the weather at all. For the past hour, ever since she left her meeting with Ed, she had been wandering through the exhibits at the ice sculpture contest, only half seeing anything, just hoping to buy enough time to sort out her muddled thoughts.

The theme this year was “People We Love.” And the sixty-five entrants had, as usual, interpreted the theme in sixty-five different ways. One artist had chosen Scooby-Doo, another had carved a bust of Shake
speare, and a third had, in a fit of amusing candor, sculpted a six-foot replica of himself.

Sarah was standing in front of an anatomically correct sculpture of Marilyn Monroe when she spotted Harry and Emma walking by. They seemed so contentedly absorbed in each other, she almost didn't speak. Harry's arm was around Emma's shoulders, and her fingers were hooked casually over the edge of his back pocket. It completed a simple, magical circle.

Sarah would have let them pass. But they saw her first.

“Sarah!” Emma dragged Harry over, though he clearly would rather have been alone with his wife on a planet all their own. “How are you?”

Sarah dug through the ashes of her mood and salvaged one real smile for Emma's joy. “Great,” she said. “I guess I don't have to ask how
you
are.”

Emma grinned. “It shows, huh?”

Sarah caught Harry's eye. “A little. You're pretty much glowing like a lightbulb, Emma.”

“Well, here's my special secret. A rip-roaring fight does wonders for the circulation.” Emma grinned. “And making up afterward is good exercise, too.”

Harry was flushing, so Sarah took pity on him and changed the subject. “How's Mike Frome doing? My uncle says he donated some of Mike's restitution hours to the city. Has he started working yet?”

Harry nodded. “He's been painting Parker's office. Nothing too hard, but we'll keep him busy, I guess.
We considered the chain gang, busting rocks, but then we thought, no, the kid can't be trusted with rocks.”

His brown eyes twinkled, and finally Sarah could see why Emma was so crazy about her husband. He had a lot of laughter in those eyes.

“But Mike's worst punishment,” he went on, still smiling, “is having to put up with Suzie. She's our clerk, and she's a pistol. She never shuts up. She rags Mike about Justine Millner so bad the kid's going to get a complex. But he's getting his eyes opened about Justine, so maybe it's worth it.”

Emma snorted. “I don't know how you get to be eighteen whole years old without already having your eyes opened about Justine Millner, but hey, maybe the kid's slow.” She glanced wryly at the Marilyn Monroe ice sculpture. “Or maybe—” She jerked a thumb toward the amazing translucent breasts, which hadn't melted an inch, even in all this heat. “You know.”

Sarah laughed. Emma looked around, as if noticing for the first time that Sarah was alone. “Hey. Where's Parker?”

“Parker? I'm not sure,” Sarah answered, as normally as she could.

“You're not sure? You two have been breathing the same square inch of air for two weeks straight. And now you're not sure where he is?”

Sarah shrugged casually. “I think maybe he had to work.”

Harry shook his head. “No, we put a temp on call today so that everyone could…”

But Emma had caught on. She glared at Harry, who finally got the message, too.

“I don't know, though,” he amended awkwardly. “Maybe he had to go in.”

Sarah smiled. “Maybe,” she agreed. Harry was a very nice man.

Emma touched her arm. “Hey, we were going to go get a hot chocolate over at the elementary school. Want to come?”

“No. I'm fine.” Sarah nodded firmly. “Really. You go ahead.”

“Well, okay.” Emma looked worried. Then she grinned. “But remember what I said, girlfriend. Sometimes a good argument is the sexiest thing you can do for a relationship.”

Sarah shook her head and waved Emma away with a laughing smile.

But when they were gone, her smile faded away quickly. She moved on down the rows of sculptures numbly. She had the strangest feeling of needing to see everything today, needing to commit to memory all the special sights and sounds of Firefly Glen.

The snow banked up against the buildings, like piles of glittering white sequins. The laughter of children, carrying clear across the crisp air. The tattered brown lace of bare tree limbs, waving against a powder blue horizon. The ice palace, wetly gleaming, already dissolving by microscopic degrees under the rays of that powerful white disc in the sky.

It was as if she knew her hours here were num
bered. And she wanted strong, clear memories to take with her, to pack and unwrap at home.

She tried to keep her spirits from sinking too far. She would survive. And somehow, someway, she would create a home for her baby. That was the only thing that really mattered.

In fact, it was actually much better that Parker had been forced to face the problems now. No real harm had been done in these two weeks of romantic fantasy. They had made love once, and the rest had been achingly innocent. They had been like children, willfully oblivious and naive but not wicked.

Just children. Playing house in the mouth of the volcano.

But they had been lucky. They could walk away now, and know that they had not permanently damaged anyone. How much worse it would have been if he had found out later, found out two, three, four years from now that he simply couldn't stay the course.

Later his defection would have been truly terrible. Later, when her child knew him. Depended on him. Loved him, just as Sarah had so foolishly allowed herself to do.

She tried to tell herself that she was lucky she hadn't made another terrible mistake. Lucky that these risks she'd foolishly taken hadn't led to real disaster.

She took a deep breath. She knew now what she needed to do. Once she got home, once she got past the worst of this, she would sit down and make a new
plan. She would map out a safe life for herself and her baby, down to the minute, if possible. She would think it through carefully. She would accept only complete control, total security. She would depend on no one but herself. She would, if she could, eliminate all risks.

She was almost at the end of the last row of sculptures. Only one exhibit remained ahead of her. Her car was in the other direction, but she decided to go look at it. At least she could truly say she had seen them all.

And then she would go back to Winter House, and tell her uncle her decision. She would be flying back to Florida tomorrow.

It wasn't the biggest sculpture she'd seen today. Or the showiest. But it was, perhaps, the most beautiful. Only about two feet tall, it was a magical butterfly carved in the act of rising from a rose, its icy wings catching rainbows in the brilliant winter sunlight.

It had been carved with great delicacy, and it was unusually thin, almost mystically transparent. In today's unseasonable temperatures, the tips of the wings had already begun to melt.

The artist, who was sitting on a folding chair beside his creation, didn't seem at all disturbed by the fact that his sculpture was doomed. Sarah watched his peaceful face, turned up to catch the rays of the sun as if he were a surfer in Malibu, with no thought but enjoying the warmth.

“Hi,” she said impulsively. “I just wanted to tell you that I love your butterfly. It's very beautiful.”

He opened his eyes without straightening up. His eyes were beautiful, too, ringed with thick black lashes. Extremely sensitive eyes. And extremely intelligent.

He smiled broadly. “Hey, man, thanks. I liked that one, too.”

She noticed that he was already referring to it in the past tense. She watched helplessly as one shining teardrop of water dripped from the butterfly's wing. It made her feel, absurdly, like crying. She wanted to catch the drop and hold it, put it back, make it stay. She wanted to stop this dying by degrees.

“Don't you mind?” She knew she ought to just move on, but she couldn't. She wanted to understand where he found this serenity, this amazing acceptance of the inevitable. “Don't you feel…” She searched for a word. “Cheated? Cheated to have worked so hard on something so ephemeral? Something that simply can't last?”

He glanced over at his butterfly. “Not really,” he said pleasantly. “It's the rules of the game, you know?”

“No. I'm not sure I understand.”

“Well.” He scratched his two-day growth of beard. “I don't know. It's just that all the best things in life don't last very long, right? Thunderstorms. Rainbows. Bird songs. The perfect hamburger. Great sex.”

He grinned. “They kind of streak through, and if you're lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, you reach out and touch 'em. But you can't hold on. It ruins stuff like that if you try to hold on.”

Sarah was temporarily unable to think of a sensible response.

“But, hey.” He raised his brows. “I guess you know all about that, huh?”

How did he know that? She wondered if her heart-ache was as clear on her face as Emma's joy had been on hers. “What do you mean?”

He gestured toward her stomach. “I mean, well, excuse me for getting personal, but you're going to have a baby, right?”

She hesitated, shocked to discover that her “secret” could be visible to a discerning stranger. But suddenly she realized that she was glad—that it felt lovely and healthy to discuss her baby openly. A baby now. Not a secret.

She nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“So what can be more ephemeral than that? The baby will be like your very best ice sculpture, but it won't be yours for long. You'll make it, and you'll take care of it, and then, when the times comes, you'll have to let it go.”

Sarah swallowed hard. And then she gasped softly. She put her hand on her stomach, feeling for the first time a tiny quiver inside her, like the sleepy beat of butterfly wings.

He grinned again, and then he leaned back, closing his eyes, returning to his mindless basking in the sun.

“So yeah,” he murmured absently. “Beautiful things are like that.”

 

S
HE COULDN'T FIND
P
ARKER
, though she practically ran from one end of the square to the other. She went
to the Sheriff's Department, the café, even back to the Firefly Suites, in case he had been looking for her there.

She checked everywhere, asked everyone. But no one knew where Parker had gone.

Finally, almost exhausted, she drove back to Winter House. She would rest a little, then renew her search by telephone.

As she pulled into the driveway, she saw his Jeep. Her heart stumbled. It felt a little like a miracle, and she had been afraid she was out of miracles.

But he was here. He had been here, at Winter House, all along.

He was coming down the steps from the house, his hands jammed into his jacket pockets, heading toward his car. He still looked tired, she thought. His hair was tousled and his head was bent as he walked in the face of the wind.

She yanked hard to engage the emergency brake and scrambled out of her car as fast as she could release the seat belt. He looked up when he heard her. “Sarah?”

She began to run. His face changed, and then he was running, too. They met somewhere between the two cars, colliding awkwardly, all desperation and no grace.

“Sarah!” He pulled her into his arms, kissing any part of her his lips could reach—her hair, her chin, her eyes, her mouth. “Oh, my God, Sarah. Tell me you didn't go back to him.”

She spoke against his lips, the words half-distinct. “I didn't go back to him.”

He let out a low groan. “Thank God.” He tilted her head so that he could look into her face. “Sarah. I'm so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”

She could hardly speak. She had run only a few yards, but her heart was racing as if the distance had been a marathon.

“No,” she said. “I mean yes, oh, God, you know there is nothing to forgive. Parker, I was such a fool—”

“No,
I
was.” He closed his eyes on a deep, ragged breath. “I was terrified, Sarah. I was so afraid that I was going to lose you. You must have loved him once, and I was so afraid that if you…if he—”

He couldn't finish. Infinitely touched, she reached up and pushed a strand of his dark, silky hair out of his eyes. “I told you I never loved him. That was true. Until I met you, I didn't even know what love was.”

He looked at her with a gaze that was equal parts hope and fear. His eyes were so blue, she thought. They were as blue as the sky above them right now. She felt a sudden, distinctly maternal urge to take every fleck of fear or pain out of those wonderful, beautiful eyes. She wanted to leave only the hope. And the love.

“Can you forgive me, Sarah? You had every right to meet him today. I understand that. I always did understand it. I was just so damn scared.”

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

“I want you to know that I understand he's going to be a part of your life forever. I can't promise to like it. But I
can
promise to stop being such a possessive, jealous jackass.”

“Oh, really? You can promise that?” She smiled. “What if Ed and I need to confer daily about the baby?”