Fox River (34 page)

“Look, do it tomorrow, okay? I’m wiped. This is just a start. You can show him the appointment book. But you know this is a long shot, don’t you? Fidelity, Joachim, Karl Zandoff? You might connect two, but all three? You’re looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Christian rested his head against the sofa. “I guess I ought to get out of here and let you get some sleep.”

“Stay a while and unwind. We haven’t finished the bottle.”

Samantha was still sitting beside him. Her fine-boned face was close to his; her lush mouth was only inches away. She leaned forward and kissed him, and his hand crept to the back of her head to keep her there.

When they finally parted, his breath was coming in uneven spurts. “It’s been a while since you’ve done that, hasn’t it?” Samantha said.

“I’ve lost the technique.”

“Not on your life.”

He pulled her close for another kiss, and this time she came with it, her breasts soft against his chest, her hip nestled against his. In prison he had tried hard not to fantasize incessantly about women. He had known thinking of them, dreaming of their soft, supple bodies, would make his hellish life impossible to endure. Now he felt as if a banked flame had reignited inside him. The touch of Samantha’s hands, the soft give of her lips, the restless movements of her tongue, were enough to drive him crazy.

She pulled away at last, just far enough to gaze into his eyes. “Just tell me one thing, Christian. Are you still in love with Julia Warwick? Because if you are, this isn’t a good idea.”

“I wasn’t gone more than a month before she married someone else.”

“You were in for life. You didn’t expect her to wait, did you?”

“I didn’t expect her to marry someone else immediately.”

“Well, she did have Callie to think about.”

The moment had passed. Desire was disappearing as fast as it had appeared, but his brain was still clouded with it. “Callie?”

She stared at him, then her eyes widened, as if she’d just realized something. “You know, it
is
getting late, and I sense some ambivalence here.”

He grasped her arm. “You said Callie was eight a while ago, and I didn’t even think about what you were saying. When was her birthday?”

She shook her head. “Not a conversation for us to have, Christian.”

“We are having it.”

“There’s nothing I can tell you. She’s not my daughter.”

And then he knew, of course. Would have known sooner if he hadn’t been so immersed in readjusting to life on the outside.

Would have known sooner if Julia hadn’t hidden her secret from him, right from the beginning. If she hadn’t deceived him into believing Callie belonged to another man.

He closed his eyes. “How can one man be so stupid?”

“Christian, I never, never meant to bring this up. Whatever secrets Julia had were hers to keep. I don’t know any more than you do.”

He opened his eyes. “But you’ve suspected. For how long, damn it?”

“After I met you and heard your story, it seemed so obvious. She looks like you. I thought that’s why you were spending time with Callie, why you’d given her the puppy. I’m so sorry.” Samantha looked as if she wanted to cry.

“She’s blond, and both Julia and Bard have dark hair. We have the same learning disability.” He was shaking his head, and he didn’t try to comfort Samantha. “And she’s already eight. I thought Callie was seven. Maisy told me about her in a letter. She must have waited months after Callie’s birth to mention it. I didn’t connect the dates. I never even considered she might be mine.”

“Maybe she isn’t. Maybe—”

He waved her into silence. “I think I’d better go.”

She rested her fingertips on his arm. “It would be very easy right now to do something you’ll regret.”

“I’ll tell you what I regret. I regret losing my daughter’s childhood.”

“Julia must have done what she thought was best, Chris. Maybe it wasn’t, but hindsight’s always twenty-twenty, isn’t it?”

He got to his feet. “I’ll come back for the boxes, if that’s all right.”

She joined him. “Go easy. Listen to me. Go easy. Think before you go and see Julia.”

But Christian had already lost more time than any man could afford. He had no intention of losing even one more night.

T
onight Julia had begged off when Maisy offered to read to her. She’d thought she needed a break. Louisa’s life was beginning to obsess her. Every night she was torn between asking her mother to stop reading and asking her to read faster. Louisa was like far too many women who had given their hearts to the wrong men.

Now she wished she had agreed to listen. She wasn’t going to sleep anyway. The house was quiet, and everyone else was in bed. She gave up and found slippers and a bathrobe to make her way down the hall.

There were no advantages to losing her sight. Now one faint silver lining presented itself. She didn’t have to turn on the lights and risk waking anyone. She felt for a glass and filled it with water from the tap; then she made her way to the front porch swing.

The night air was cool, but her chenille robe was heavy. From the woods she heard the whirring and chirping of insects and the sound of a lone night bird. She was closer to nature here than at Millcreek Farm, which was manicured and landscaped and where no woods of any consequence remained. She liked having the woods so close, although as a child there had been patches of forest at Ashbourne that frightened her.

The woods were deepest well behind the house, where Jeb Stuart Creek poured over stones as large as the ones the house had been built from. She had forbidden Callie to play there, and even when Julia learned to ride as a teenager, she always discouraged Christian from taking that route when they brought Claymore Park horses to ride at Ashbourne.

Even now, when she was feeling particularly worried she dreamed that those same woods were closing in around her, that the sun could no longer filter through treetops, and that vines twisted around her ankles and the hoofs of an unseen horse.

She shivered and decided to go back inside. She had started to her feet when she heard a vehicle coming down the driveway. She fell back into the swing and listened. At first she thought it might be Bard’s BMW. Although she’d left a message that she wanted to talk to him, he had ignored her. She planned to warn him that she was going to tell Christian the truth about Callie, but so far he hadn’t given her the opportunity.

The sound grew louder, and she realized it couldn’t be Bard. The BMW had a hum as mellow as an after-hours jazz quartet. This sounded more like Maisy’s new pickup, but louder, as if the driver was taking the gravel driveway too fast. She tried to decide what to do. Teenagers sometimes drove the county roads, drag racing where the roads widened. But Ashbourne was so far off the beaten path it rarely happened here.

She listened, and the truck slowed in front of the house; then the engine died and a door slammed. She had just decided to go inside and call for Jake when she heard Christian’s voice.

“It’s me.”

She sank back to the swing. “You frightened me.”

His voice grew louder, and she knew he was moving toward her. “What are you doing out here?”

“Trying to convince myself to fall asleep. What are you doing here?” Her heart was pounding faster, and not from residual fear.

“Well, I’ve been asking myself the same thing. All the way over. I’ve been asking myself why you would tell me the truth tonight when you didn’t tell me almost nine years ago.”

She sat very still, but the swing continued to move. She knew better than to play dumb. She couldn’t buy time. No one should ever cheat this man of another second.

“We have to go somewhere else.” She got to her feet. “Everyone’s asleep inside, and I don’t want to wake them.”

He kept his voice low. “My daughter among them?”

Her stomach knotted. “Callie’s been asleep since nine.”

“Then we’ll drive somewhere. Come on.”

“I’m in my bathrobe.”

“I don’t give a damn.”

“Christian, I can’t see to get down to your truck.”

He was silent. At this moment she doubted he wanted to touch her, and if she fell headfirst down the steps, he probably wouldn’t care. Finally, though, she felt his hand on her arm. “I’ll help you.”

She knew she had to go with him, but it was the last thing she wanted to do. “Just don’t pull me. It sets me off balance.”

“Come on.”

She shook off his hand and stretched out her own to find his arm. She followed his lead, feeling her way down the steps and out the stone path to the driveway. He led her around to the passenger side of the pickup and opened the door. She put one foot on the running board and felt for the floor with her other. In a moment she was seated, and the door slammed behind her.

“Where are we going?” she asked when he got in and started the engine.

“Somewhere we can talk in normal voices.”

“Where you can shout at me?”

He was silent.

They drove for a while. She had no idea where they might be going, but she wasn’t afraid for her safety. She was desperate to explain, although she knew there were no explanations good enough. She had kept one man from a daughter he would have loved, even behind prison bars, and asked another man who couldn’t love Callie to be her father.

Christian applied the brakes, and she heard gravel spinning under the pickup wheels. Then the truck rolled to a halt, and he turned off the engine.

“Where are we?”

“Down the road from the swimming hole.”

“An odd choice, don’t you think?”

“Why, because we used to park here and make love? That’s what it was, wasn’t it, Julia? Or is that another secret you’ve kept all these years?”

“I was going to tell you, Christian. I’ve just been trying to reach Bard first to warn him.”

“Warn him that Callie’s real father was finally going to know the truth?”

“Yes.”

He exhaled, as if he had been holding that particular breath for an hour. “So…”

“I was afraid at first after you came back. I didn’t know what to think or do. I’d been through so many changes. I’d lost my sight, left my husband. I didn’t know what you would think, or what it might do to Callie or my marriage.”

“We can’t have something as insignificant as the truth upset your marriage, can we?”

“That’s not fair. I’m just trying to explain there were more people involved in this than it seems on the surface.”

His voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Let’s see. Me. My daughter.”

“Christian,
I’m
involved, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, and so is Bard. His name is on Callie’s birth certificate. He married me to give her that name.”

“So that no one would know a convicted murderer had fathered her?”

“Do you think that would have been easy for a little girl to explain?”

“Here’s something you could have taught her. ‘My father was put in jail, but he’s innocent. My mother says someday everyone will know the truth.’”

Julia began to weep. “After my day in court you hated me. I tried to tell you I was pregnant. Your lawyer said you didn’t want to speak to me. I sent you a letter begging you to call me collect. Peter brought it back unopened.”

He was silent.

“I didn’t know what to do. You were in prison for life.”

“So you turned to Bard Warwick.”

“He supported me during the trial. He kept showing up when I needed someone the most. He made sure I ate and got out of bed and did the things I needed to. And he listened. To everything I said. The way you always had.”

“I was a little busy fighting for my freedom to listen to you, Julia.”

“After you were convicted, I realized I was carrying your baby. I must have gotten pregnant the last time we were together.”

“The night before they put you on the stand.”

She pushed on. “Bard and my parents were the only ones who knew about the baby. Maisy wanted me to have it and raise it at Ashbourne.”

“You could have had an abortion. Better than having a murderer’s child, wasn’t it?”

“Do you think I would have killed your baby? She was all I had left. Don’t you understand? She was everything to me, just the way you had been.”

She heard the sound of a window being rolled down. It was the only sound for at least a minute. Then he spoke. “So you decided that since I meant everything to you, you would hide my child’s existence from me.”

“I decided that if you knew you had a daughter you couldn’t see or hold it might well drive you over the edge.”

“So you did this for
me?
”

She heard the sarcasm. “I thought I did it for everybody. Bard wanted to marry me, and he said he could be a good father to the baby. I needed someone to tell me which foot to put in front of the other, and God knows, that’s his forte. You needed some measure of peace. Our baby needed a life without prejudice. So I married him.”

“It seemed the thing to do, huh?”

“I was twenty years old.”

“Well, you’re twenty-nine now.”

“I was going to tell you. I told you, I was waiting until I could tell Bard my decision.”

“You owed him that, but you didn’t owe me the truth? Not anywhere along the way?”

“I owed you the truth all along.” She began to weep again.

“Yeah, you did.” He started the engine and pulled back on to the road.

“What are you going to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“We have to talk about Callie and what this will mean to her.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“You can’t tell her, Christian. Not now. Do you know how confusing it would be? She’s going to feel like she’s at fault somehow. Her relationship with Bard isn’t the best.”

“I guess he’s not all that fond of raising another man’s child after all.”

It was too close to home to deny.

“He’d better not lay a finger on her,” Christian said.

“It’s not like that. He’s just not a man who likes children.”

“So you’d like me to stay quiet so they can work out their relationship? Then what? When she’s older I slip in the back door and mention how much I wish I could have been her daddy?”

He was driving too fast. She could tell by the sound of gravel flying against the windshield, but she didn’t ask him to slow down. He did, finally, on his own. He pulled to a stop.

“I’m going to tell Callie the truth when I think she’s old enough to understand how this happened,” Julia said. “She’s already crazy about you. Once she’s over the shock, she’ll want to be your daughter.”

“And in the meantime? Your husband’s going to let me spend time with her? He’s going to welcome me into the family fold?”

“I’ll make sure you have time with her. We’ll find a way.”

“Right…”

She found his arm with her fingertips. “We’ll find a way to make this right.
I
didn’t keep you from raising your daughter. The Commonwealth of Virginia did that. But I can make sure you have all the time you need with her now. And I will. I promise.”

“Just tell me one thing. How could you claim to love me, then do this?”

She heard the agony in his voice. She began to weep softly, remembering the perfect day under the Ashbourne sun that she had relived in Yvonne’s office. “I loved you so much I’ve had to find myself again, one piece at a time, and it’s taken years.”

“Somebody asked me tonight if I still loved you.”

She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her bathrobe. “You’d better take me home. Or maybe you have. Have you?”

“Do you want to know what I said?”

“Was it before or after you realized Callie was your daughter?”

He didn’t answer. He asked another question. “When did you stop loving me?”

“Never.”

He said nothing. Then he opened his door and closed it again, quietly enough that she knew they must be back at the house. He came around and opened hers, then she felt his hand on her arm. “Be careful,” he said gruffly. “I’ll help you down.”

“I’ll do it.” She set a foot on the running board, then reached for the ground with her other. It was farther away than she’d estimated, and she pitched forward. He caught her, wrapping his arms around her to steady her.

“Christian…”

His mouth came down on hers with such a fierce hunger that for a moment she was frightened. Then fear fled and exultation filled her. Even if she hadn’t let herself think of this moment, she had dreamed of it. She fitted against him as if their bodies had never been parted. She couldn’t see him, hadn’t seen him for nearly nine years, but now she realized how little that mattered.

She opened herself to him as she never had to Bard, because Bard had never wanted this much of her. She whimpered and pressed herself tighter against Christian. Her lips parted as his did, and she felt the smooth thrust of his tongue.

He parted her robe, and it tangled at her feet. Her breasts were bare under her nightgown, and he cupped one, his palm rough and searching. Desire was a liquid force, and she pressed her hips against his, searching, too, and finding the tangible evidence of his arousal.

He pushed her away and held her there with his hands on her shoulders.