The Housekeeper's Daughter (14 page)

“Good. If they give you any trouble, let me know.” The older man stared out at the dark patio, his expression frowning and thoughtful.

“Maya needs weekends off,” Drake said suddenly. “She works seven days a week. I'm pretty sure that's against the labor laws.”

His father swung his head around, his eyes narrowed as he studied his son. Drake gave him a level stare.

“You're right, son. Maya, my apologies to you. I've been so caught up in…other things, I've not paid much attention to the younger boys or the number of hours you've been putting in.”

“It's okay,” she hastened to assure him. “Mom helps when I need it. That is, when she's not busy in the house or with meals. And Dad, too, when he's not working on the garden.”

She realized her whole family was beholden to the Coltons for their livelihood. By choice, though. Both her parents had been offered high salaries and other
benefits by visitors to the hacienda who had seen their work.

“A family that plays together, stays together,” Joe murmured. “Working together is important, too, or just being there for each other.”

Drake cast a quiet glance her way, his gaze filled with dark thoughts that she sensed were painful.

“You were there,” she reminded him, “when Marissa was born. You helped…” She lost the thought as his perusal sharpened.

“But I wasn't with you during the months before that.”

She sensed the criticism he directed at himself. He wasn't a man who could easily brush off his failings. “You didn't know. I'm sorry for not writing. I realize I should have. You had a right to know about the baby.”

His eyes locked with hers as golden threads of longing arced between them, reminding her of all the things she loved about this man. That he was honorable went without saying. That he was gentle and caring and considerate was also true. He took his responsibilities seriously.

Perhaps she was being stubborn and proud, thinking only of her own bruised feelings after reading that note.

There's no place in my life for a wife and family.

Those words still caused an ache inside, indicating as they did that he'd only had a brief time for her as a lover, but nothing more. She shook her head slightly, denying the pain. Regret was a useless emotion unless it brought a change in future actions.

If she had been positive he loved her, she would have accepted his proposal and tried to help him with the past. However, she wouldn't become an added responsibility, their lovemaking yet another mistake he had to atone for.

That was the unkindest cut of all, she mused, borrowing a phrase from Shakespeare. That he considered their time together a mistake, one that he would have to pay for in marriage and child support all his life, brought such a flurry of regret on her part that she wanted to put her head down and cry out her misery.

Of course she didn't. Instead, she smiled and listened to the men chat about the various Colton projects and children, both natural and foster.

Marissa woke, stretched, then nuzzled Drake's shirt. Not finding what she wanted, she screwed up her face and let out a wail.

“Here, Mom, I think this is your department,” Drake said with a smile. He brought the baby to her.

She rose, intending to go to her room, but Joe gestured for her to be seated.

“There's something special about a mother nursing her child,” he said. “It brings out the most tender of feelings in men.”

“Yes,” Drake agreed. “And protective, too. Having a child puts things in a different perspective.”

Maya saw the two men exchange a look as she settled down to feed the hungry baby, who stopped crying as soon as she found the nourishment she wanted. When it was time to burp the child, Drake
took Marissa from her, laid the baby across his knees and patted her back.

“She likes this position best,” he told his dad, sounding very much an expert on the subject.

“Michael preferred that one, too, but you always had to be up on my shoulder where you could see what was going on. You used to scrutinize everyone who came into the room. If you didn't like their looks, you bellowed until they left.”

Maya laughed at this picture of the young Drake.

“You hear that?” Drake asked the baby in jest. “She's laughing at your ol' dad, kid.” He got up and brought Marissa back to Maya. As he laid her in Maya's arms, the back of his finger brushed lightly against her breast. Flames shot to the spot, then swept outward to every point in her body. He must have felt it, too.

Immediately he moved away. “Sorry,” he murmured.

She nodded self-consciously, hating the blush she could feel invading her face.

Joe stood up. “You young people will have to excuse me. It's been a long day, and I think I'll go along to my room. There's a report I need to look over before I go to bed.”

Maya echoed Drake's “Good night” as the older man left them. She wondered if Joe thought they should be alone.

To work out their problems?

He was kind and thoughtful, but she didn't want to be alone with Drake. It was too dangerous to her
peace of mind. She shifted the baby to the other breast to finish feeding.

“I wish I had the right to touch you without apology,” Drake said, taking her by surprise.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“If we were married, would I have to apologize for accidentally brushing against you?”

She didn't answer as she helped the baby latch on. Wincing as her breasts gave that funny, almost painful, sensation—her milk coming down, her mother had told her—she slowly shook her head.

He snorted ruefully. “You had to think about it long enough before answering.”

“I wasn't sure what to say. Even if we were married, I'm not sure what rights we would have…over each other,” she added.

“All the rights of a husband and wife to caress and touch each other and to enjoy each other's company.”

“Physically?”

He became thoughtful. “That's part of it, but not all. There're other ways of sharing. Like now. I like watching you while our daughter nurses. It makes me remember touching you there and how much I enjoyed it. I know we can't make love until the doctor checks you out, but I like thinking about it and how you responded. Those little breathy cries drove me wild.”

Aghast at his candid remarks, she gave him a repressive scowl. “I'm not going to continue an affair with you, Drake,” she informed him stoically, meaning it, yet afraid she wouldn't be able to hold to that decision if he pursued her.

“I thought that was part of marriage.”

He gave her his most innocent look, which was totally belied by the sexy simmer in his eyes.

“Oh. Marriage.”

“Yes, marriage.” He took a deep breath. “I'll not settle for less between us. Our daughter deserves a settled family life. As well as our other children.”

Maya gasped. “Are you suggesting… Do you think that I, that we…”

“Yes, we will.”

She could only stare at him in shock.

“It will happen. We're too volatile together. There's need and hunger and feelings between us. We've shared too much. I've told you about the ghosts that haunt me from the past. Is it fair to use that to keep me at a distance?”

Maya lowered her head, not sure what to say.

“Is it?” he persisted softly. “I've offered you a future with me as my wife. I want to help raise our child.” He paused, then went on quietly, “I want other children. With you. You're the only woman I can see as their mother.”

“That's not fair, Drake.”

“It's true. You are my future. If you're not it, then I don't know what it will be. I'm tired of the dark, Maya. Give me the sunshine of your love, and I'll pledge you my future, my love, anything you want. If you'll but have me.”

The hot, desperate tears clawed at her throat. “A humble Drake?” she managed to say with only a slight tremor in her voice. “Is this the man we know and love?”

He slid a finger under her chin and gently lifted so that their eyes met. “I hope so,” he said sincerely. “We have a beautiful daughter. We've shared a great passion. Surely that's enough for a beginning.”

“Maybe.”

“Then, marriage?”

She shook her head. “I can't. There's something, a barrier…I can't explain.”

He sighed. “Okay. I have to finish my present assignment. That will give us six months to discuss and plan for the future. I'll call, and we can e-mail each other. Will you give me that time?”

Staring into his eyes, she nodded, not sure what she was promising.

“In the meantime, I want to be part of your life for the rest of my leave. Let's relax and enjoy our baby.”

His mood changed, his grin becoming cocky and entirely too knowing when it came to her, but love, she found, was stronger than pride or fear or any other emotion. She had to take a chance and see where this might lead.

“All right,” she said.

He clutched his heart. “The lady agrees. I must be dreaming.”

She joined in his laughter, hearing a new note in it. No, not new, old—the old Drake of long ago.

Perhaps there was a future for them after all.

“W
here are you?” Patsy Portman, who had called herself Meredith Colton for ten years, demanded. “It's about time you called.”

“I'm in Redding. I've got some news,” Silas Pike, who preferred to be called “Snake Eyes,” told her. “You want to hear it or not?”

“Of course I want to hear it! Have you found Emily?”

“Not exactly—”

Patsy huffed in exasperation. “I'm not sending you any more money.”

“Will you hold on to your horses and let me finish?” he demanded belligerently. “I found the trucker who picked her up, some hayseed driving a hay truck.”

He laughed as if he'd said something extraordinarily witty. Patsy rolled her eyes. “And?”

“He gave her a ride to Wyoming.”

“Big deal. We already suspected she was in Wyoming.”

Obviously considering himself a super-sleuth, Silas gave his little self-satisfied laugh. “Now we have proof. Some regulars in this truck stop recall her asking about some hick town of Needle Creek.”

Patsy could feel her flesh tingle. “
Nettle
Creek?” She'd nearly forgotten about the McGrath homestead where Joe had been raised. She hadn't been there and had no desire to go to that godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere. Prosperino was bad enough, thank you very much! “You fool, Pike. It's Nettle Creek. She must have gone to her uncle Peter's place.”

“I know all about him. As I see it, all I have to do is mosey on up to Nettle Creek, find the McGrath place, and bingo, we'll have the kid.”

“Well, do it,” Patsy instructed. “And hurry. Things aren't looking good on this end.”

They made arrangements to talk in three days' time and hung up. Patsy slipped the tiny cell phone into her pocket. It produced a pulse she could feel against her thigh instead of ringing, so no one knew when she got a call. Joe didn't even know about the phone. She'd gotten it under a fictitious name.

Smiling with delight at fooling Joe and his watch-dogs—that hateful Peter McGrath and his daughter Heather, now married to that nosy detective, Thaddeus Law, and Joe's stupid kids—she danced around
the room. When her elated mood passed, she went over the situation again.

Letting Emily Blair Colton live after the accident ten years ago had been a mistake. She should have bashed in the brat's head after she'd forced Meredith off the road and into the ditch.

But she'd had to get rid of Meredith at the time. Unable to take the chance that a body might be found and discovered to be the real Meredith, she'd hit on another, quite brilliant plan.

Meredith hadn't known what was happening when Patsy delivered her to the clinic for the criminally insane where she'd once been held. That had worked out great.

In fact, other than the glitch of getting pregnant with Teddy, life had worked out according to plan. Everything had been going fine until Joe's birthday party.

Whoever had shot at him had ruined
her
plans. Joe'd been all ready to drink his glass of champagne—which contained a nasty little birthday present from her personally—when that idiot had fired…and missed! Joe had dropped the glass without touching a drop.

It was discouraging. With Emily's increasingly frequent nightmares about the accident and insisting there had been two Merediths at the scene, one good and one evil, Patsy had no choice but to get rid of the girl, who was now a young woman. That was why she'd had to hire Snake Eyes.

All this extra worry left her with no time to concentrate on getting rid of Joe and finding her sweet
baby, Jewel, and looking for a house of her own. Maybe in San Francisco. One of those mansions down at the marina perhaps, or in Pacific Heights. Lombard Street, the block billed as the crookedest street in the world, was elite, but there were all those tourists to deal with. Nob Hill, of course, was quite passé.

She sighed as she settled on the silk brocade lounge chair. Her life was too complicated by far. She liked the current notion of simplifying things. Which was exactly what she was trying to do. With Joe and Emily—and Snake Eyes Pike—out of the way, her life would be much simpler. She laughed and laughed at the idea.

 

Emily Blair Colton studied herself in the mirror. A natural chestnut redhead, she wondered if she should dye her hair to make it harder for anyone to trace her. The kind trucker who had given her the ride to Wyoming might easily recall a redhead, but could he identify her if she were a blonde or brunette?

Turning, she paced the room.

Was she being paranoid about her adoptive mother and the evil twin? Perhaps the creep who had tried to murder her had no connection to her nightmares concerning the accident years ago and her dreams, or memories, of seeing two Merediths, one dazed and shaken from the auto wreck, holding her head where she bled from a cut, and the other Meredith, a gleeful smile on her face, coaxing the injured Meredith into the unknown vehicle that had swerved at them and forced their car off the road.

Emily had passed out then from her own injuries. When she'd come to, safe in the hospital, there had only been one Meredith. Everyone had assured her she was suffering hallucinations, but there was one thing—her mother had never called her “Sparrow” again after that. She didn't seem to recall the nickname she'd given Emily.

There'd been other changes, too, little things too numerous to overlook, but not obvious enough to warrant an investigation. Anyhow, how did you investigate a
feeling
that things weren't right?

Her best friend and cousin, Liza Colton, had believed her from the first. Now Rand, the oldest Colton son, seemed nearly convinced, too. He'd asked Austin McGrath check out their mother. Mother? Emily thought of her as the evil twin from her nightmares.

Pain pierced her heart. What had happened to the good Meredith, the tender woman who had adopted her and saved her from a life of loneliness and fear when she was orphaned?

Whatever the cost, she knew they had to find out the truth. She needed to call Rand and see if Austin had learned anything more about Meredith's past. She'd always been rather silent about her youth.

Emily put on her new heavy coat and started off for work. Her job as a waitress gave her the means to stay in Keyhole, where she felt safe. Sort of.

Rand thought she should come stay with him, but she was afraid she'd be traced too easily to her oldest brother. He agreed everything was in a mess concerning her disappearance and she was still in grave danger.

Someone had collected the ransom money Joe had paid for her safe return, but who?

The supposed kidnapper was pretty bold to demand ransom when he didn't even have a victim. Was he or she a mere opportunist? Or was the evil Meredith in cahoots with someone else?

Tears burned as Emily trudged to the café, entered the back door and hung up her warm clothing. There seemed no end to the nightmare her life had become.

Toby Atkins was at the café counter when she started on duty. “Hi,” he said, putting his coffee cup down.

The young law officer was blond and handsome in a boyish way, although Emily had to admit his lanky, six-foot frame wasn't boyish in the least. He contributed to her feeling of safety in the small town, but his attention was troublesome, too. He was both suspicious of her and interested in a man-woman way.

There was certainly no room in her life at present to even consider that kind of thing. She was doing her best just to stay alive!

 

Drake entered the kitchen where Maya and her mom worked quietly together in the manner of women who had long done so. He found it comforting in a way his own family life had rarely been. There was a graciousness in the Ramirez family dealings with each other, their caring for each other always forming the backdrop of their relationship.

The dark cloud of past mistakes seemed to draw closer as he thought of the Coltons. An ominous sense of foreboding gathered inside him. He wasn't sure if
it was due to his past or to the present worries. He'd talked to Rand last night, but neither had any new information.

Today was Wednesday, the first day of March. He'd arrived on the sixth. Almost a month.

Whenever he came upon Maya, an incredible burst of anticipation overrode common sense. He wanted to go to her, to kiss her until they were both breathless.

Although he knew better than to expect total happiness, being with her and the baby brought a new dimension to his days. True, life had a way of slapping a person down and reminding one of the grim realities, yet he was aware of a lightness to his step whenever he headed for the house, knowing his two girls were there.

His?

The scar on his hip throbbed, as if his body wanted to caution him about expecting too much of the future. “I'm going to my room to change,” he told the two women. “I'll see you at lunch.”

“Right.” Maya watched him go, her heart righting itself with an effort. It was scary to love someone so much and know your happiness was in his hands.

“It will work out,” her mother said unexpectedly.

“Will it?” She didn't see how. Hearing Marissa whimper through the baby monitor, she hurried to her room.

The baby cried during the diaper change, but stopped when Maya sat in the rocker and played hand-clapping games and talked nonsense with her.
After stimulating Marissa into wakefulness, she nursed the baby, her thoughts in limbo as she stared out at the rolling land and hills surrounding the ranch.

Outside, it was a cold, clear winter day. Friday was supposed to be misty, according to the weather report that morning. A chill attacked her heart, and she wished for the warmth of summer. She'd always assumed she would be a June bride. She smiled at the mockery of it all. Here she was a mother without ever being a bride.

After nursing Marissa, she put the baby in the bassinet. Her father had gotten her old crib from the attic of their house and was in the middle of repainting it. He'd promised it would be ready by the end of the week.

She liked the idea of having the bed for her baby. Then she wondered where she and Drake and Marissa would be by the end of March. So much seemed to have happened already—his return, the birth, now a new element had entered their relationship. He stayed close to them, holding the baby and rocking her, helping with bathtime. There was that new undernote of happiness in him, too.

It almost made the darkness disappear. Almost.

“Mom, the monitor is on,” she said through the intercom. “I'm going to go over Joe's math homework with Ms. Meredith. Yell if you hear the baby.”

Her mother answered through the central unit. Maya picked up the school papers from her desk and headed for her boss's quarters. She really dreaded facing the woman, as her mood swings were completely unpredictable.

Just as she started down the hall of the south wing, she saw Drake slip into his mother's room.

Maya slowed, wondering if she should interrupt. However, Ms. Meredith had given orders for a daily report on Joe's progress with percent problems. Maya walked on. At the closed door, she hesitated again, then knocked.

No answer.

The hair prickled on the back of her neck. She knocked again. Still no answer. All was silent.

Drake's being in his mother's room when she apparently wasn't there struck Maya as odd. She quietly opened the door. “What are you doing?” she asked.

Drake was bending over an open drawer of Meredith's desk. He jerked around with a glare, then smiled.

“Caught in the act. I must be getting careless,” he said, then shrugged. “I'm obviously going through my mother's things.”

“Why?”

“I'm out of pocket money and thought I'd steal some?” he suggested.

“Huh.”

“You won't go for that?”

“No. What are you looking for? Where is your mother?”

“She decided to go to San Francisco for the day. I'm looking for clues.”

Maya laid Joe's math homework, graded and returned by his teacher, on Ms. Meredith's desk. “To what?”

“Anything. I don't really know,” he added at her frown.

“Does this have to do with the questions you asked me before, the ones about your mother?”

“Give me a minute, then we'll talk.”

Maya shut up and watched him thoroughly go through the desk, including checking every drawer and the desk itself for hidden compartments, she supposed. He looked through a file drawer, whistled when he saw the duns and the amount of money she owed to various merchants, then moved on. He then proceeded to search the rest of the room just as thoroughly.

“Nothing,” he said at last. “Let's go.”

Taking her arm, he ushered her into his room. Maya wasn't at all sure about being alone with him in his bedroom. It was a familiar place and brought back remembered ecstasy. And remembered pain.

He closed the door and leaned against it. “Trapped,” he murmured without a smile to show he was teasing.

The latent fire in his eyes warmed her clear through. “What were you looking for?” she asked.

“Evidence that my mother isn't the woman she claims to be.”

Maya recalled their previous conversations about the changes in his mother, about the fact that she'd had a twin. But he'd told her the twin had died. The implications became clear. She clutched a hand to her chest. “Surely you don't think… You can't possibly believe…”

“What?”

“That this twin… No, it's too preposterous!”

“Is it?” He paced the room. “Things have changed, but when did it happen? Mother was different after the accident that time when she was taking Emily to visit her biological grandmother.”

“When Emily thought she saw two Merediths.”

“Yes.”

Maya had never seen Drake look so grim. “Have you talked to Sophie or Amber about this?”

“No, only Rand. As you said, it's too preposterous.”