Authors: Elisabeth Naughton
Her fingers dug deeper into the seat as anger coursed through her. The first thing she’d do is handcuff him to a chair until she got the answers she was looking for. Then she’d sandblast him for putting her through this nightmare.
On a deep breath, she forcibly released her grip and ran her hands over her hair. Jake wasn’t going to rise from the dead. And she was stuck without a past.
She spotted Ryan walking along the waterfront path before he spotted her. That odd sense of déjà vu she’d felt in the street outside his house rushed through her as she watched him. His hands were tucked in the front pockets of his slacks, and he wore dark sunglasses over his eyes, but she didn’t miss the scowl on his face. Or the rigid shoulders and stiff back that screamed of his unease at the current situation.
He stopped a few feet away. Clenched his jaw. When she stood to meet him, her stomach pitched, a reaction she wasn’t prepared for.
“Thanks for coming,” she managed.
“I’m not entirely sure why I did.” There was an icy tone to his voice she didn’t like. Did he use it in his business dealings to intimidate and influence? If so, it was effective.
“I appreciate it, all the same.” She shifted her weight, not sure what she wanted to say now that he was standing in front of her. An awkward silence spread between them like a vast ocean.
“I doubt you know anything yet, so why this little meeting?” he asked.
For some reason, she wanted to reach out and bridge the gap between them. To comfort him. Which was an unexpected reaction. “No, I don’t. Simone said it would take probably a week for the test results. Which, by the way, I wanted to thank you for agreeing to.”
He didn’t respond, just rocked back on his heels and watched her. A whiff of his scent drifted on the air, and a shiver of awareness swept over her when she drew it in, that musky spice oddly familiar.
Not familiarity, she told herself. Awareness. He was an attractive and powerful man, and underneath it all, she was still a woman. Even before any of this had happened, she’d thought he was handsome. The tabloids and magazines, though, didn’t do him justice. His nose was straight, his jaw square and clean shaven, his features chiseled and so very masculine. And his mouth…
Her gaze traveled to his lips. Full. Smooth. Tempting. She wondered what it would feel like to brush her thumb across that bottom lip, to trace the faint scar down the right side of his chin. The man had a sensual mouth that at one time she’d probably kissed and tasted and claimed as her own.
Whoa
.
Where the heck had that come from? She forced her gaze away from that tantalizing mouth and back up to his eyes—or his sunglasses, to be more precise.
And because she couldn’t see those eyes, she was having an increasingly difficult time reading him. It only added to her unease.
“Okay, look,” she said, straightening her back, putting the hormonal thoughts out of her mind. “I just wanted to apologize for all of this. I know you’re not very happy with me. And I want you to know that I’m really sorry. I just want to know the truth. You have no idea what this is like for me.”
“For you?” His blond brow raised behind dark glasses. “I don’t know what this is like for you? Try being in my place for ten seconds.”
A sigh escaped her lips. “I have. I know this isn’t easy for you, for any of you. I didn’t intentionally wake up one morning and say, ‘Hey, I think I’ll find Ryan Harrison and screw up his life.’ I’m not like that.”
“Oh really? Because that’s just what you did.” He started to walk away, stopped, and turned back to her. “Do you have any idea how many freaks are out there trying to mess up my life? My personal life is my business, no one else’s. Dammit! If the press gets one whiff of you, they’re going to gather like flies on shit. Did you even stop to think about the consequences, even for a minute? My daughter is going to get sucked into this. The press will have a field day with her, and I’ve spent the last five years making sure she’s been shielded from them. It would be one thing if you came looking for us because you cared, but just to show up on our doorstep because you’re curious? It’s crap!”
There was more anger in him than she’d realized. She tried to keep her voice even and calm. “It’s not like that.”
“It is like that. We mean nothing to you. I can read it on your face. I saw it the day you stood in front of my house. You look at us and see nothing. And we look at you and see everything. And it doesn’t matter one damn bit.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, irritation radiating from his strong, muscular body.
Kate dropped to the bench, all the fight suddenly gone. “It does matter. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. It’s not just about knowing. It’s more than that. If I turn out to be Annie Harrison, then that means Julia is my daughter. And I can’t turn away from that. I never would have left my daughter on purpose. And I wouldn’t want her growing up thinking I did. If I didn’t do something to set this right, I’d never be able to live with myself.”
She swallowed hard at the implications of what she’d just said. If she turned out to be Annie Harrison, and Julia really was her daughter, then there was a strong chance Reed was Ryan’s son. Not Jake’s as she’d been led to believe. Reed looked so much like Ryan—even she could see that—was she fooling herself thinking she wasn’t Annie Harrison?
She forced back the fear. No matter what, she had to know. One way or the other, she had to know the truth.
She glanced up, wished desperately that he’d take off those damn glasses. “I don’t want to screw things up for Julia. I don’t, please believe that. And I wouldn’t want to put her in harm’s way. But…but if she’s my daughter then I have to know.”
For a minute, she was sure he was going to turn and walk away, but then he eased onto the bench next to her, slid off his sunglasses, and rested his head in his hands. A man defeated. One who was hurting, just like her. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Christ, that’s all I’ve thought about for the past three days. Julia’s my whole world. And she’s pissed about this. She doesn’t understand it. She’s a very grown-up nine-year-old, but she doesn’t understand any of this. I don’t, either, for that matter.”
“That makes three of us.”
He looked out over the water. “I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how this could even be possible. What happened to you between the time I dropped you off at the airport and that plane took off without you on it? They said you were on that flight. I identified your purse and laptop from the wreckage afterwards. Whatever happened to you had to have occurred in the time-span of less than an hour. For the life of me, I can’t figure it out.”
“If I knew the answer to that question, this wouldn’t be so hard to take.”
He shook his head, looked down. “No. Nothing could make this easier.”
His words settled between them, his heartache over the situation hanging in the air. When he finally looked over at her she saw honesty and truth in those brilliant blue eyes. And a jolt ran through her, one she wasn’t prepared for.
“If I had known you weren’t on that plane, I swear to God I would have been looking for you.”
The determination in his voice shook her right to her core. Those fierce, unwavering eyes seemed to be looking all the way into her soul, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t break away from his gaze. It drew her, tugged at something that felt like it was awakening inside her. “I believe you,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes, then looked back over the water, breaking the spell pulling her under. “So, what do we do now?”
“I…I don’t know. Wait, I guess.”
“We already know the answer. I know it. You know it too, or else you wouldn’t be sitting here with me right now.”
A lump clogged in her throat, the realization hitting her that he was right. She shook her head. “I need to know for sure. Julia’s not going to want to have anything to do with me until we can prove it one way or the other.”
“She’s probably not going to want to have anything to do with you regardless of the outcome. She’s been through hell and back.”
A dull ache settled in her chest. She didn’t want that. She only wanted to make things better. For all of them. “I don’t want to hurt her, or you.”
“No matter what you do, it’s going to hurt us.” He stood and slipped his sunglasses back on. The glint of gold caught her attention as he moved, and for the first time, she noticed the ring on his left hand.
“We’ll deal with it when we know for sure.” His voice was no longer soft but hard and cold. “Until then, don’t try to go see her. She needs time to get used to this whole thing. Your hanging around would just confuse her more.”
Kate nodded, unable to make sense of the changes that came over him. She’d never experienced anything like it. One moment his voice was tugging on her heartstrings, and the next it was slicing through her, straight to the bone, sending chills up and down her spine. “Okay. I can understand that. Are you going to be okay?”
“Me? Yeah, I’m pretty much used to hell. I’ll get by.”
She watched as he walked away. But she didn’t feel any better than she had before. If anything, she felt worse. Talking with him had only proved he’d loved his wife a great deal more than she’d anticipated.
***
No file found
.
Kate glared at the computer screen, the blinking cursor only accentuating the tension headache behind her eyes. Waves crashed outside on the beach. A gray drizzle slapped at the second-floor window outside her home office.
She should be keying in edits on an article that was supposed to be finished two days ago. Instead, she was running another search on Ryan Harrison.
So far, she’d found pictures of him cozied up to a black-haired vixen at some charity function. Another hit showed him with a blonde on his arm at a baseball game. And the
National Star
had a whole file of pictures of him with that voluptuous, redheaded model.
The man obviously got around.
“Mama?”
“Hmm?”
Why did she care? Just because he
may
have been her husband? That was stupid. She’d been married to Jake, after all. It wasn’t like she had a reason to be jealous.
But what did surprise her was that from all her research, his life had apparently changed after his wife had died. Before, he’d been vice president of a small pharmaceutical company. After, he’d branched out on his own, expanded, and made a killing in the field. Was it just a stronger work ethic since becoming single? Or had he used his wife’s life insurance money to expand his company?
Either way, he’d benefited immensely from Annie Harrison’s death.
Kate typed in AmCorp Pharmaceuticals and came up with their home page. She scanned the technical information. Mostly cancer drugs. Specialized cancer drugs that often were pushed through the FDA because of need and a promise of significant benefit.
“Mama,” Reed said from her feet where he lay on his belly on the floor next to her, playing with his Power Rangers, “I asked you something.”
She tore her eyes from the computer. “What, baby?”
“Where do you go when you die?”
Her fingers paused on the keyboard. Reed hadn’t once asked about death in the weeks since Jake’s passing. “To heaven.”
He rammed a red motorcycle into a black one, his gaze intent on the destruction he was causing. “You don’t come back?”
Oh, man. Of all the topics to bring up, he had to go for this one. Easing off her chair, she settled onto the rug next to him. “Who said you come back?”
“Michael at preschool says when starfish die, they come back to life.”
A smile tugged at her mouth. “Starfish can reproduce by something called regeneration. When an arm is cut off, a whole new starfish can grow out of it. It doesn’t mean they die, though, and then come back to life. Once a starfish dies, it’s gone for good.”
His sapphire eyes lifted to meet hers. Eyes, she realized, that were just like the eyes she’d seen on that computer screen. “To starfish heaven?”
A laugh escaped her lips. “Yeah, baby. To starfish heaven.”
He went back to his toys. “But you died and came back.”
Kate drew in a breath. How did he know that? Had Jake told him? “That was different. Reed, look at me.” His gaze lifted. So innocent and adorable. Her only link to her past life. The only thing she really had left. “Mommy’s heart stopped because of an…accident. The doctors started it again. It’s different from someone dying. When you die, you don’t come back.”
“Not ever?” Tears swam in his eyes.
An ache filled Kate’s chest. She knew he was thinking of Jake. A four-year-old shouldn’t be asking questions about death and dying. He shouldn’t have to go through losing a parent. But here he was, growing up much too fast, having to deal with things no preschooler should have to face.
She rubbed a hand across her chest. Surprisingly, the pain wasn’t for Jake like she expected. This time, it was for a family she didn’t know. For a man and his daughter who’d lost someone they loved deeper than she’d expected. All her research didn’t change that fact. She’d seen the heartache on their faces. Was Julia asking these questions? Wondering why her mother was back from the dead and what it all meant in the long run?
Shouldn’t Kate be the one answering them for her, trying to set some of this right?
“Mama?”
Reed’s voice drew her attention. Smiling, she ran a hand over his blond hair. If the tests came back positive, she’d have to tell Ryan about him. Dread coursed through her at the thought. What would he say when he found out he’d missed out on four years of his son’s life? That Reed thought of another man as his father? It would only make things worse.
She didn’t have answers to the questions swirling in her mind. And at the moment, she didn’t want to think of them. She just wanted to focus on her sweet son’s face and remember why she was here, why she was digging for information that she may never find.
“Yes, baby?”
“I love you.”
Her face softened, and she drew him into her arms and onto her lap. “I love you, sweetheart. More than you will ever know.”