"I was eleven. Nat was sixteen. There wasn't much we could do. The social service people put us in foster homes."
"They separated you?" Claire was appalled.
His eyes looked bleak. His hands gripped hers tightly. "Yes. I was miserable. Scared. Lonely. But I toughened up. Fast. In order to survive, I had to. The first home I was in, they were really nice to me. I even got so I liked them. Then something happened. The grandmother of the family had to move in with them, and they couldn't keep me. So I got sent to another, then another."
"Oh, Nick," Claire said again. Her heart bled for the lonely boy he'd been.
"Most of the foster parents were indifferent. The only reason they kept foster kids was for the money."
Claire thought about her own happy, secure childhood. About Kitty. About her father. About how much they'd loved her.
"But I survived. I had one real good thing going for me. I was smart."
Claire smiled.
"Natalie was smart, too. She graduated from high school at seventeen and got a full scholarship to nursing school. She finished the training as well as her degree in three years, so by the time she was twenty, and I was fifteen, she was a nurse. A damn good nurse." Pride tinged his voice, and he finally released Claire's hands. "She had an offer from City Hospital here in Houston, so she got custody of me, and we moved to Houston."
Claire decided she loved Natalie a lot.
"Anyway the rest isn't really that important. She met David, her husband, and they were married. I lived with them summers and holidays. They helped me some financially, although most of my college expenses were paid by scholarships."
He stopped, took her hands again. His touch sent a warming through her body. "The point to this story is that I wanted you to see what had caused me to act the way I did. I'd always wanted a family. A real family of my own. But I was scared, too. I'd made one bad choice in Jill, and the experience had hurt me. I tried to cover up the hurt with cynicism, but underneath, I was scared to be hurt again. That's why I presented you with a business proposition. That way, if the deal didn't work out, I wouldn't be hurt."
He leaned forward, touched his lips to hers.
Claire's breath caught as his warm breath mingled with hers.
"Claire, I love you. I'm no longer afraid to admit it." He drew back, and it was hard to see his eyes in the quickly darkening room. "Do you love me?"
"Yes. But Nick—"
His kiss silenced her. She closed her eyes, slipped her arms around his neck, felt his heart beat against hers.
Nick. I love you. I love you.
The kiss deepened, but before passion could rage out of control, he pulled back.
They were both breathing hard. Boom, boom, boom, went Claire's heart.
"You left me because you couldn't give me a child, didn't you?" he said softly.
“I-I . . . “
"Tell me the truth."
"Yes." Her throat clogged with emotion. She
still
couldn't give him a child. And hadn't he said how much he wanted a family?
"Claire, darling, don't be sad. Whether we have a child of our own is no longer important to me. Nothing is as important to me as you are. Besides, we can adopt. Would you like that? We could adopt one of the children from the home."
"You told me once you couldn't imagine choosing one child over another."
"We'll adopt all of them!" He hugged her close again, kissing her hair, and Claire closed her eyes, savoring the moment, savoring this intense happiness.
But there were still things she had to know. "Nick, why did you try to prevent me from seeing Brigitte?" She had to ask. She was beginning to hope, but she didn't want this between them. They had to clear all the cobwebs away if they had any hope of starting over.
His voice was muffled as he spoke against her hair. "I think in some odd way I felt as if I were reliving my life through Brigitte's. I knew about her background. Knew it was very similar to mine. And when you took her for the weekend, it was as if you were toying with her. I thought since you'd abandoned me, you'd abandon her, too. I don't know. It was crazy. All messed up in my mind."
"Oh, Nick." Her arms tightened around him.
"Claire, please say you'll come back. I don't want to live without you."
Claire raised her head. In the twilight, she saw the sheen of his eyes and knew in her heart this was where she belonged. She smiled. "I don't want to live without you either."
And then he kissed her again. This time the kiss wasn't gentle. This time he didn't hold back. Passion flared between them as their mouths and hearts met. And when he took her, only moments later, he took her the same way. Fast and furious. Hot and hungry. Unplanned and urgent. It was the kind of coming together that first-time lovers experience, when they're too greedy and too excited and too impatient to wait. But Claire exalted in its lack of delicacy, its unbridled ferocity, and for the first time, she knew Nick was as vulnerable as she was. He loved her. He needed her. He wanted her.
She reveled in his fierce demand, gave herself up to it, and demanded in return.
She was filled with an indescribable joy, a fierce and consuming love.
When their hearts slowed and they lay in each other's arms, replete, and happy, Nick reached for the music box. He wound it, and the beautiful melody poured over them.
When the song was over, he began to make love to her again—this time more slowly. "Maybe we'll make a baby yet," he whispered huskily.
Claire sighed. "If we were unable to make a baby before, in all those times we made love, the odds aren't good that we will now."
He smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. "You forgot how much I love to gamble!"
Houston, Texas - Friday, October 28, 1992
Pregnant!
Amy Carpenter couldn't stop smiling. She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel in time to Bonnie Raitt's "Let's Give 'Em Something to Talk About" and grinned from ear to ear.
She knew she shouldn't be so happy. After all, this pregnancy was a bit premature since her wedding wasn't scheduled to take place until the start of her Christmas break—still eight weeks away.
But she didn't care. Joy, like champagne, bubbled inside, giddy and irrepressible. She felt like shouting from the rooftops.
And her parents! They would be thrilled. They wanted grandchildren more than just about anything. Of course, they would have preferred she wait until she was married—especially Amy's mother—but she didn't think the fact that she and Sam had jumped the gun would matter much in the end. It was the baby that was important.
A delicious shiver raised chill bumps on her arms as she thought of her fiancé. Sam.
Oh, Sam, please be happy, too.
She told herself he would be. He wanted kids, and even though he'd said "someday" the one time they'd discussed the subject, Amy didn't think he'd mind if that "someday" was sooner than they'd anticipated.
She wished she could call him and tell him immediately. Unfortunately, where Sam was, there were no phones. Amy would have to wait until she heard from him again.
He'd originally expected to be back in Houston by now. Sam was a staff photographer for
World of Nature
magazine, and he'd thought this assignment to shoot the elusive snow leopards who made their home high up in the Himalayas would only take a couple of weeks, a month at the most. But the snow leopards had proven more elusive than ever, and Sam had been in Nepal more than two months already.
It might not be so bad if she could at least talk to him regularly, but he was in such a remote area that his base camp was a three-day hike, so she'd only talked to him twice since he'd been gone.
If Amy thought her married life would be like this—a long series of absences with no communication—she might not have been so eager to marry Sam, no matter how much she loved him. But he'd promised her he would do his best to avoid assignments that would keep him away longer than a week or two, and he had also promised he would take her along with him whenever he could.
Now that she was pregnant she wouldn't be able to travel with him as planned, at least not until the baby was old enough to go, too, but that was okay. The trade-off was worth it. She was going to be a mother.
A mother. Imagine.
Less than four months ago she'd despaired of ever finding the right man, and now she'd not only found him, but she was going to marry him over the Christmas holidays and have his baby in May. Some days she could hardly believe her good fortune.
She smiled contentedly, her momentary unease gone. As she braked for a red light, her big emerald engagement ring sparkled in the afternoon sunshine slanting through the windshield. Amy twisted her hand a little, admiring the rich color and fire of the stone, which was surrounded by tiny diamonds.
She loved the ring. It was so like Sam: out of the ordinary, a bit larger than life. She hated removing it, even to wash her hands.
She was still smiling as she pulled into the driveway of her parents' home, punched in the security code that would open the electronic gates, and drove around to the back of the property where she lived in an apartment over the garage.
The first thing she saw was Justin Malone's dark green Toyota. She frowned. What was Sam's best friend doing here so early in the day? Justin and Sam worked together and had even lived together for a while. Several weeks ago Amy had given Justin the code to the security gate because he was helping her paint the inside of the apartment while Sam was gone. Even though she and Sam were planning to find another place to live when he returned, Amy wanted to leave the apartment fresh and shining in case her parents decided to rent it to someone else. And Justin being Justin had insisted on giving her a hand.
Her unease deepened.
It was only four-thirty. It wasn't like Justin to leave work so early. Since he'd been promoted to business manager at the magazine, he'd been working long hours. Amy had enjoyed teasing him about his diligence, saying she guessed that now that he was "one of them" she'd have to be careful what she said in front of him.
Justin was fun to tease because he was so earnest and serious. Too much so, Amy thought. She'd already decided that once she and Sam were married, she would try to find someone for Justin so that he'd loosen up a bit. "The Quiet Man," Sam called him, always there, always the person you could count on.
She waved as she passed him, pulling her Miata into the garage. "Hi!" she said as he walked toward her. "What a surprise! What're you doing here at this time of the day?"
As he came closer, she saw a peculiar expression on his lean, angular face. His blue eyes, normally so bright and riveting, seemed shadowed and troubled, and he wasn't smiling.
"Hello, Amy." His voice sounded odd, too—rough and strained.
Her smile slowly faded. Everything inside her went still except her heart. Something was terribly wrong. She wet suddenly-dry lips and stared up at him.
"Amy," he said again. He reached for her, placing his hands on her shoulders and looking down into her eyes. "I-I've got some bad news."
No.
She shook her head. She wanted to put her hands over her ears. Whatever it was Justin was going to tell her, she didn't want to hear it.
"I came right over," he continued. "I didn't want you to hear about this on T.V. or the radio."
Sam.
Please, God . . . please, God . . . please, God.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came.
Justin's face was rigid and tightly controlled. Only his eyes betrayed his inner torment. "We heard an hour ago. Sam . . . " He took a long, shuddering breath. "Sam had a bad accident. He fell down the side of a cliff, and . . . and when the search party finally reached the place where they thought they would find him, his . . . his body was gone."
He swallowed hard, and the part of Amy's brain that still functioned normally noted in a detached way how his Adam's apple bobbed and how his dark hair, normally neat and well-groomed, looked as if he'd been running his hands through it.
He squeezed her shoulders. "They . . . the authorities believe he's dead."
"Nooooooooo . . . noooooo . . . " Amy heard the keening sound, hardly aware it came from her mouth.
"God, Amy, I'm so sorry."
Amy felt his strong arms go around her, she heard him continuing to talk, continuing to say comforting words, continuing to explain, but nothing he said mattered. "No, no, no," she moaned.
She tried to hold on. She tried to listen. To think. But she felt sick to her stomach and lightheaded. A loud buzzing filled her head, and then there was nothing but blackness as she slumped against him.