Authors: Emily March
The flicker of hope in his eyes caused the sting of unwelcome tears once again in hers. Furiously, she blinked them away. She wasn’t sixteen and stupid. He wasn’t going to make up for this. He couldn’t. “I wish it were that simple. Unless you can figure out a way to unsay the words you said on Aspen Street, I have a huge mess on my hands. You see, until you opened your mouth in front of my festival booth, Eternity Springs didn’t know that you were Lori’s father.”
The look he shot her was sharp but showed no sign of surprise.
“You said you didn’t want us, so I lied to everyone—even my parents,” she explained further. “I said I had had too much to drink at a party over in Crested Butte and slept with a tourist. For a while there, I was the biggest scandal to hit Eternity Springs since, well, you.”
“Better to have been with a stranger instead of me?” he drawled bitterly.
“In Eternity Springs, months after you went to juvie jail for harming one of the town’s favorite sons? Yes. Besides, I was angry at you for rejecting us. I also thought it would make life easier for Lori if she didn’t have Murphy baggage to tote around.”
“Made your life easier, too, didn’t it?” he shot back. “Am I even listed on her birth certificate?”
Sarah shrugged her answer and tried to ignore the twinge of shame. “I’m not going to apologize for it. You called my baby a mistake.”
Cam looked away. “I never imagined you would lie about her paternity. You never lied.”
“Well, I did about that.” She lifted her chin, silently telling him to stuff his complaints.
“Wait a minute.” Cam sat up straight and frowned at Sarah. “In March, Lori went pale as a ship’s sail at the sound of my name. Who does
she
think I am?”
“She knows. I told her the truth when she turned sixteen. A handful of my closest friends know, too, but up until you opened your mouth, everybody else in town believed that the guy who got me pregnant was a transient tourist from Texas who gave me a fake name, plied me with alcohol, and took advantage of my poor naïve teenaged self.”
“So when I asked where my daughter was—”
“You outed me.” Suddenly exhausted, Sarah took a seat on the bench opposite Cam.
He scowled. “I guess I could have handled this better.”
“Ya think?”
“I didn’t set out to cause a scene.”
“I hate to think of what might have happened had you tried. Pauline Roosevelt was about to wet her pants, she was so excited at her front-row seat.”
His mouth quirked in a sheepish grin that made Sarah do a double take. She remembered that grin. Once upon a time, it had made her melt.
Shoot, it still made her melt.
Now that her temper had waned and her panic subsided, she was able to see past the haze of emotion to view him clearly. She almost wished she was still in a lather. The man was too darn sexy by half. It wasn’t fair. He should have lost his hair or found a beer gut or had his nose broken or his teeth knocked out in a fight. When he shoved his fingers through his hair once again, she recalled how much she’d enjoyed running her fingers through his hair while they cuddled after making love up at Lover’s Leap.
Get a grip, Reese
.
“Damn.” He winced, shaking his head. “I walk back into this town and first thing I do is let my temper get the better of me. That’s something I don’t do anymore. But today … the way people looked at me and the way I reacted, the last twenty years might never have happened. I’m still the punk troublemaker.”
“Well, you’ve certainly caused trouble for me,” she grumbled. “Why have you come here, Cam?”
He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. “I want to meet Lori and get to know her.”
“Why now?”
He hesitated before saying, “Because I’m haunted by my past. Seeing you in March made me face it. It made me want answers to some questions I have.” His tone rueful, he added, “Although now that I’ve had a taste of the answers, I’m not sure I want them.”
Sensing that he referred to her “worthless” remark, Sarah regretted the choice of words. She searched for a way to explain something she wasn’t at all sure of herself. “Seeing you was such a shock. We weren’t ready. Lori wasn’t ready.”
“Why not?” His jaw hardened, but he kept his voice neutral. “What have you told her about me?”
Sarah straightened her spine. “I didn’t bad-mouth you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“When she heard my name, she looked at me as if I’d killed her dog.”
“I can’t help what other people said about you, Cam. Lori’s always been a curious girl with an interest in Eternity Springs’s history. When she started asking about you, people around town didn’t think twice about it, or hesitate to give her their views. You still have quite a reputation in town.”
“I figured that out myself five minutes after I hit town. I take it you didn’t defend me to her?”
Sarah let silence speak for her.
“I guess I can’t blame you.” He studied her for a long moment, then rolled to his feet and moved to the center of the gazebo. There, he waited for her to meet his gaze before saying, “I
am
sorry, Sarah. I’m sorry I pushed you away after I put Andrew Cook into the hospital. I’m sorry I turned my back on you and our child when you came to me, looking for help.”
Again, pesky tears stung her eyes. She was glad to hear a sincere apology, but at the same time, it stirred the coals of her anger. Apparently “I’m sorry” couldn’t wipe away years of heartache.
He put his hands into his pants pockets and rocked on his heels. “Is Lori her first name or her middle name?”
“First. She’s Lori Elizabeth. Lori Elizabeth
Reese
.”
His smile was sad. “That’s a beautiful name. She’s a beautiful young woman. I’m anxious to meet her.”
“Well, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Lori isn’t here.” Sarah folded her arms. “She has an internship this summer, so she didn’t come home.”
His hard look suggested he didn’t believe her, but once Sarah met his gaze with the righteousness of truth, he sighed. “Maybe it’s best it occurs away from Eternity Springs. Where is she?”
Sarah opened her mouth, then hesitated. “I don’t know yet if I’m going to tell you. This is a mess. I have to figure out what is best for her. Plus, she’s an adult. It’s her choice if she wants to see you or not. I can’t force her to do it. I won’t try.”
Now it was Cam’s turn to open his mouth, then hesitate. Rather than speaking, he stepped forward and took a seat beside her. Not
too
close. No danger of touching. But she could smell the scent of soap on his skin. Irish Spring, of course. Some things never change. “I quit carrying that soap in the store because of you.”
“Pardon me?”
“Never mind.” Closing her eyes, she rubbed her temples. “For crying out loud, Cam. Why did you have to take the bull-in-a-china-closet approach here? For all that Eternity Springs has changed, in some ways it’s still the same. Hummingbird Lake will always be cold. The hot springs on Angel Creek will always stink. Murphys will always have ‘bad blood.’ Now Lori will be a bad-blooded Murphy whether she wants it or not. You took away her choice.”
“That’s ridiculous.” He kicked at a pinecone lying beneath his feet.
Yes, it was. But it was also reality, a patch of dirty, threadbare cloth in the quilt of Eternity Springs’s history. “Maybe so, but that’s the reputation your family has had around this town for over a hundred years. Just because no Murphys have been living here doesn’t mean that people here have forgotten them—or their evil genes.”
“That’s just small-town, small-minded idiotic.” His mouth thinned and his eyes went hard as he shoved to his feet and began pacing the confines of the gazebo. “I didn’t have bad blood. I had a father who beat me and nobody—
nobody
—stepped in to help.”
Sarah winced at the charge. That was true. Shameful, and true.
“That’s why I acted like an ass growing up. I was an angry kid who didn’t know any better than to act out. I’ll tell you something else, too. If these people start treating Lori like dirt just because of who I am, then she’s better off living elsewhere.”
She couldn’t argue that point, either. And yet … “This is our home.”
“Only because you’ve never tried anything different,” he snapped back. He flung out his arm, pointing west. “It’s a big world out there, Sarah, and there are plenty of great places to live. Places a whole lot better than Eternity Springs.”
A ribbon of nerves fluttered through her. What he said, how he said it, sounded like a veiled threat. What was he thinking?
Would he try to take Lori away from here? Away from me?
Sarah’s stomach sank. Until that moment on the wharf in Cairns, Lori had loved Australia.
No, don’t be silly
. He couldn’t do that. Her daughter wasn’t going anywhere. She and Lori were tight, and besides, Lori didn’t want to have anything to do with this man.
And yet what did Sarah really know about him? She knew he had a son, lived in Australia, did some sort of work for a tour company, and could model for
GQ
. But what about the boy’s mother? Sarah hadn’t missed the fact that Cam’s ring finger was bare, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t married. Why had he really traveled halfway around the world at this point in time?
He could be the world’s biggest liar and she wouldn’t know. She hadn’t spoken to him in more than twenty years. For all she knew, he was sick and needed a kidney and that’s why he’d come looking for Lori!
“Are you on dialysis?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
You’re losing it, Reese
.
Maybe so, but she would do anything to protect her daughter. Did Cam Murphy pose a legitimate threat to Lori? To make that determination, she needed more information—whether she wanted it or not.
She’d spent years trying not to think about Cam, telling herself to resist the urge to track him down. For more than two decades, she’d assured herself that she didn’t
want
to know what had happened to him after his release from juvenile detention. For the most part, she’d meant it. Now, for her daughter’s sake, she couldn’t afford that approach any longer.
She bent over, let out a frustrated groan, then gathered herself, stood up, and faced him. “All right, here’s the deal. Lori and I will weather this storm. The people who matter won’t give us grief, and those who don’t matter, don’t matter. My only priority is to do what is best for Lori. But in order to decide what that is, I need to know more about you.”
He braced his hands on his hips and appeared vaguely insulted. “I’m happy to answer any question you have, Sarah. I have no intention of hurting our daughter. However, you need to know that I do intend to meet her. One way or another.”
“Did you mean to make that sound like a threat?” Sarah folded her arms. “Because if you did, I’ll tell you right now that I’m the gatekeeper. Only my dearest friends know where she’s working, and they won’t tell if I ask them to keep quiet.”
Unexpectedly, he grinned. “You’re a lioness, aren’t you?”
“Darn right.”
“Then I won’t mention that I have an open-ended return ticket to Australia. I can hang around and wait indefinitely for her to come home.”
Indefinitely?
She narrowed her eyes. He had to be kidding. He had a school-age son. Surely he was kidding.
“It’s good you’re not going to mention it.” She returned to her seat on the bench, crossed her legs, and folded her hands. “So, Cam, tell me about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?”
“The basics. Work. Family. How you came to live in Australia. Normal stuff.”
He leaned a shoulder against one of the gazebo’s posts, folded his arms, and casually crossed his ankles. “I’m the owner/operator of the tour company you ditched, Adventures in Paradise Tours.”
He was the owner? Not just a deckhand?
Well. Okay
. “Hey, thanks for refunding our reservation fees.”
“That was an exception in policy,” he commented drily, then continued. “As far as family goes, it’s just me and Devin. We lost our twelve-year-old Weimaraner, King, in March.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” It was a sincere expression of regret—for more reasons than one. By sharing the death of the family pet, he’d made it awkward for her to ask about Devin’s mother. It hadn’t escaped her notice that he’d neglected to mention either a wife or an ex-wife or a deceased wife. Or a girlfriend.
“The story of how I got to Australia hasn’t changed from what I outlined in the first letter,” he continued. “Have you forgotten? Or did you not bother to read it?”
First letter?
She uncrossed her legs and sat forward. “What are you talking about?”
“Ten years is a long time, but I’m still surprised that you’d forget.” Hurt flashed briefly over his face. “As I recall, that part of the story filled up the front and back of three pages.”
“Wait a minute,” Sarah said, holding up her hand, palm out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t remember that letter?” His eyebrows arched above accusing green eyes. “That’s almost humiliating. Guess you must have been sidetracked by the check.”
Check?
Sarah’s brows rose.
What check?
“I admit they were late in coming. The first ten years I didn’t have two quarters to rub together, but once I got on my feet, I did try. I made a couple of phone calls, found out that you still worked at the Trading Post, so I sent the letters there.”
Sarah’s heart began to beat double time.
Letters. Checks
. She cleared her throat, then stated, “You sent me a letter.”
Cam stared at her hard, his gaze measuring. “I sent you
six
letters.”
She shook her head. This was crazy. Why would he lie like this? “You never sent anything to me. What trick are you trying to pull here?”
His brows dipped in a mean scowl. “You’re the one who’s playing tricks. I sent letters and checks, two a year for three straight years. When you never cashed the checks, I figured that was your way of giving me the finger.”
“I didn’t … I never saw them, Cam. This is the first I’ve heard about letters or checks.”
Six letters? Six checks?
And she never received one of them? How could that be?