Hearts in Motion (13 page)

“She does?”

Abby shrugged. “We got Lion after the accident. Sleeping with him comforted Grace.”

“It will comfort me, too,” Cara said loudly, this girl who’d spoken so softly only a few days ago.

Holden gazed at Cara and swallowed, his Adam’s apple working. Emotion, Abby thought. This unemotional man was swallowing emotion. Or it could be that his throat was dry, and she just wanted to think it was emotion.

“Daddy, you can sleep with us, too.”

“It might be crowded,” he said.

“Your father can sleep on the couch,” Abby said. “Or the floor. His choice.”

“I’ll take the couch.” He grinned at her. “Since I wasn’t offered any other bed.”

She cocked her eyebrow. He was flirting with her. In front of his daughter.

Her heartbeat fluttered. What happened to the uptight, stick-in-his-butt, slightly frazzled guy who’d come to her house a week ago?

And when did he get so...sexy?

He’s engaged, she reminded herself. Maybe he flirted now, but that didn’t mean anything. There’d been an attraction between them since the first day in her kitchen, even if she’d thought he was the opposite of fun. But that happened sometimes between men and women, and the best thing to do was ignore it.
 

She didn’t admire women or men who took any pretty thing they desired just because they could. Not caring if it was right or wrong. She was not going to become one of them.

Even if she wanted it.

Even if he wanted it, too.

“There’s always Lion’s dog bed,” she said.

Cara laughed so hard she fell to the floor and held her stomach.

She had a gift, Abby thought, grabbing on to joy so quickly. The speed of her recovery from years of lack of affection was amazing. And to see her like this... Abby’s heart felt full.

A choking sound came from Holden, and she saw he was staring at Cara with astonishment. Abby’s eyes prickled with moisture. Every time one of her foster cats was adopted, she always cried. Even for the ones who’d given her trouble. The ones who bit and scratched her and had bathroom accidents.

She’d been looking forward to the two weeks passing, but now she knew that when Cara was gone, she’d better make sure she had a full box of Kleenex in the house.
 

***

“Daddy, will you kiss me goodnight?” Cara pursed her lips to meet his as he bent over her bed. One peck, over quickly. She smiled at him, her face blindingly happy.

As he stepped back, the dog jumped on the bed and then the white cat, each settling down on a different side of her.

“You look like a princess in a fairy tale,” Abby said, standing next to him, a faint scent of jasmine reaching up to him. “All you need is a tiara.”

Cara giggled. “I feel like a princess. Will you kiss me, too?”
 

“Of course.” She bent and hugged Cara, her whisper coming up to him. “You’re a sweetheart.”

“You’re a sweetheart, too,” Cara said, her voice clear. “This is better than any dream I ever had in my whole life.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Abby bent forward again and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Close your eyes and go to sleep. I’ll make eggs in the morning. Okay?”

Cara closed her eyes tight.

Holden had to force himself to follow Abby out of the room. All night he’d been unlike himself, as if his brain were still in that dark fog and only emotions pulled him through it. At the door, Abby turned off the light and murmured, “Sweet dreams.”

She headed into the kitchen and offered him a drink. He surprised himself by accepting a beer.

“You’re going to be a great mother,” he said.

Sitting at the table, she gave him a look he couldn’t interpret. He sat across from her. Even before she spoke, he could tell by the tension in her face that she wasn’t going to tell him he was a great father.

“Did you know she hardly ever sees her mother?” she asked.

He took a sip of his beer.

“And apparently she sees her grandparents more often, but sometimes full days go by when she doesn’t see them, either.”

He didn’t reply, though every word was a twist in his gut.
 

“Most of her time is spent with a series of changing nannies who spend most of their time on the phone talking to friends or texting them. The last one was sneaking out at night. She made Cara promise not to tell her grandparents that she left her alone in their wing of the house.”

He closed his eyes, feeling as if he’d been kicked in his heart.

“You can’t let her go back to them.”

He nodded, looking at the ceiling and seeing a crack in it. Cara shouldn’t live in a house with no love. And Abby and her sister shouldn’t live in a house with a crack in the ceiling. “I know.”

“You’re going to keep her?”
 

“I have no choice, do I?”

“You have the same choice you did before. She told us she never saw you before her grandparents brought her here.”

He lowered his gaze to her. She leaned toward him, her elbows on the table, her expression so serious and so hurt. As hurt and serious as he felt inside.

“How could you do that?” Her tone was low and tense. “It doesn’t sound like you.”

“I thought Juliana would take better care of her.”

“You never checked. I can’t understand that. It’s crazy to me that you—” Her voice choked, and she set her lips together and stood. “Never mind. I’ll get a pillow and a cover for the couch. You can watch TV. I think I’ll go to bed early.” She headed to the hall, leaving the full bottle of beer on the table.

Except for the pad of her feet and the hum of the refrigerator, there was no sound. She hadn’t reached the hall when he finally spoke in a low voice that sounded tortured, unable to stop himself.

“Cara’s not mine.”

She turned, staring at him. She took a quick glimpse down the hall then strode back to the table.

“What do you mean?” Her voice was hushed.

“Juliana was cheating on me. Cara’s not mine.”

“You’re sure?”

“By the time Juliana had gotten pregnant, we’d stopped having sex. She lived in California, and I lived in Wisconsin. We planned on getting a divorce, but my grandparents weren’t in good health. I didn’t want to upset them. Juliana was in love with her married boyfriend and in no hurry to end our marriage. When she found out she was pregnant, she begged me to wait until after the baby was born. Begged me to let her put my name on the birth certificate.”

Emotions flitted across Abby’s face: surprise, anger, sorrow. He braced himself for more questions about his marriage. Instead, she looked at him for a long moment before speaking.

“Does this mean you can’t get custody?”

He laughed again. He should have expected the unexpected from her. “I’ll get custody.”

“Good. I wouldn’t let a mouse stay with the grandparents.”

“Who are upright, well-respected citizens,” he said.

“I guess money can buy a good reputation,” she said. “As many politicians have already discovered.”

“I can’t speak for politicians, but her grandparents aren’t doing anything illegal. They aren’t beating her.”

“Not physically. But emotionally...” She sat, grabbed the beer bottle, took a slug then slapped it down. “Do the parents know she’s not yours?”

He shook his head. “Juliana was afraid of what they would say. She made me promise not to tell them. In return, she promised a swift, uncontested divorce and said she wouldn’t seek child support or any money, so I agreed.”

“I suppose her parents were cold to her as well.”

“I believe they were. Cara and Juliana had that in common.”

“I’m surprised that Cara’s so...lively already,” she said. “But if she has to live with them again, it won’t take her long to go back to the dark place. And now that she’s known affection, it might be harder to go back to the coldness.” Her tone softened. “I think you’ve gotten to her in time.”

“Not me.” He leaned toward her. “You.”

She sat back. “I won’t be part of her life. I was just doing this for two weeks. And you’re getting married. Your fiancée will be her mother.”

“Will she?” He took another drink before speaking. “Ryan hinted that he knew something about Portia. Something I should know before I marry her.”

She put her hand over her mouth, partially covering it. He didn’t have to be an expert in body language to know what that meant.

“You know,” he said.

“I don’t.”

“You’re lying.”

She shook her head. “I’m not. I don’t know anything for sure.”

“Join the crowd.” He held up his beer as if making a toast with it then brought it to his mouth and gulped it down, something he couldn’t ever remember doing, not even as a teenager. He thumped the bottle on the tabletop, and she winced.
 

“Ask Portia,” she said.

“I did. Are you going to make me hire a private detective?”

She closed her eyes, silent. Then her breath came out in a long sigh. “It’s not just Portia. It involves someone else.”

“Ryan.”

Her quick laugh and crinkling eyes told him she was telling the truth as she shook her head.

“So you are going to make me hire an investigator?”

Her features settled into cool lines, and one eyebrow arched. “I’m not making you do anything. All I can say is that if you distrust her to such an extent that you’re even thinking of calling a detective, are you sure you want to marry her?”

He didn’t have to think about his answer. “No.”

“No, you’re not sure? Then—”

“No, I’m positive I don’t want to marry her.” As he said the words, a sense of freedom rose inside him. An exultation.

She tilted her head. “That was fast.”

“I can be fast.” He looked at her, suddenly filled with a deep longing. “Or slow.” His voice turned husky. “I can be very slow.”

She shook her head and laughed, and her laugh was husky, too. She stood. “I’m going to get the covers and a pillow for you.”

“We could just sleep in your bed. Now that I’m not engaged.”

“As far as Portia is concerned, you’re still engaged. And tonight I’m sleeping alone.” She grinned at him, and he saw a flush on her cheeks. When she walked away, he watched her hips sway.

It was going to be a long night...but it didn’t matter. He headed to the living room and the couch, feeling lighter, as if a heavy weight on his shoulders had dissolved.

Tonight he should think about why he’d almost married someone so wrong for him, but with this bright, shining Abby sleeping so near to him, it was hard to think. He wasn’t made of steel. And even the mythical man of steel had the hots for the inappropriate Lois Lane. The reporter who, if she discovered his real identity, would reveal it to the world.

It was probably a good thing that Abby had turned him down. He wasn’t like Ryan, a rabbit that went after anything that wagged its tail his way. He wanted to be the eagle who had one mate for life, though it was too late for that, with one divorce behind him and engaged to another woman with secrets.

But that was in the past. He was looking to the future, and it felt to him that his forever woman was Abby, as if this knowledge was tangled in his DNA.

Only he’d once thought Juliana was his forever woman.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Abby, he thought. He couldn’t trust himself.

Abby returned to the living room with her arms loaded with a pillow and covers. He took them from her, their hands touching, and his body reacting to that touch.

His emotions might be melting, but the rest of his body was not melting after all.

It was going to be a long night.

16

Why are they sleeping in different rooms?
Quigley asked.

In the hall, between Mom’s bedroom and the living room, Minnie stretched. It was the time of the night when the moon was the highest and the humans were sleeping.

But as Quigley pointed out, not in the right places. After all, Mom and Holden wanted to sleep together. She and Quigley could smell it. Even Lion, sleeping as soundly as the humans now, had smelled it.

They’re humans,
Minnie said
. They do things that don’t make sense.

We should jump on top of him.
Quigley peered into the living room, where Holden stretched out on the couch, breathing heavily in sleep.
Wake him up so he’ll go into Mom’s room.

It’s not that simple with humans. You never know what they might do.

I still think—

The bed in Mom’s room squeaked, then creaked. Sounds of her getting off it.

Minnie sat up, fully alert. Mom was awake. She did that sometimes at night. Then she would sit on the living room chair and take turns petting her and Quigley while she read a book. Sometimes she put the book down and just petted her. It was their time together.