Her Foreign Affair (3 page)

A first date she’d said, right? Did that mean they hadn’t progressed beyond coffee? No hand holding? No kissing? God forbid… How would she break this up without Birdie knowing she’d brought home not only her brother—half brother—but father, for dinner? Her very gorgeous, missing from her entire life, father.

As she watched his face, drinking in every detail, his eyes warmed, then hardened. He didn’t seem nearly as surprised as she felt. Had he been looking for her? Had he used his son to find her through her daughter?

Birdie pinched her arm, bringing Randi back to the moment with a small jolt. Oh Lord, she was standing there like an idiot, everyone looking at her with expressions of curiosity and puzzlement. Hoping to find her cool hostess voice and not a strangled, choked voice, she gulped.

“Hello, Court.”

Many things filled Courtland Bailey Robinson’s head as he stared at the woman clutching her daughter’s arm as if she were sinking. Not the least of which was satisfaction. Finally, a conclusion to the investigation he’d begun ten years before. A bittersweet triumph because, apparently, she’d been keeping things from him, including her real name.

“Jean,” he repeated, then shook his head and corrected himself. “Randi. Sorry, but I know you as Jean.”

All the years of searching aside, he had to drink her in with his eyes. God, she was beautiful. She’d fulfilled the promise of her youth. And then some.

Where she’d once been pretty, bright, fresh, and young, twenty-two years later, she’d become the most wonderful of creatures, a mature woman. Confidence radiated from her as she lifted her chin ever so slightly, her jade eyes challenging him for having the nerve to enter her domain. Her petite body, once slender, now showed soft curves behind the faded green apron stained with the efforts of her labors to produce a feast. He took in the surface details, as too many emotions to name whirled through his mind. He’d been thinking of her so much lately, for a moment he wondered if he were dreaming.

“You know each other?” Birdie, the beautiful young woman who he’d thought vaguely reminded him of someone, looked from her mother to him and back again, her little brow wrinkled in confusion. “Mom? Are you okay?” Birdie protectively covered her mother’s hand on her arm.

After her initial cool greeting, Jean’s—Randi’s—face had paled under her smooth makeup, making the colors all wrong on her face. A second later, the pasty shade heated into the rosy glow he’d loved, though usually produced for a completely different reason. Her body had flushed that way, in the same perfect shade of dewy pink while…

“Dad?”

His son’s query caused her gaze to dart in the lad’s direction and forced Court to blink himself back into the present, his lips curving in a smile greatly at odds with the emotions swirling deep inside. Hadn’t she trusted him enough to gift him with her real name? Then again, what he’d done, been forced to do, probably had proved him untrustworthy in her eyes. Still, the mystery of where she’d ended up was solved, and the relief it brought nearly knocked him to his knees.

“I don’t usually bring roses to strange women, but Birdie said they were your favorite, and I’m delighted to say you aren’t a stranger after all. Well, except for the name thing. Why didn’t you ever tell me your whole name?”

Randi’s wide, shocked gaze darted back to him, bounced over to Drew, and zoomed to him again as if searching for signs of something. Most people gushed over the similarities between him and Drew, so she was clearly noticing for herself. It didn’t take much to ignore the reaction as usual. He held out the bouquet of soft pink roses, so pale they were nearly white. As he recalled, they were exactly her favorites.

“Oh. Thank you. Funny you should find these…”

She ignored the question about her name and reached for the flowers. For an instant, her hand tightened around the tissue and plastic wrapped stems until the knuckles turned white. It seemed as if she were almost tempted to beat him about the head and shoulders with the bouquet of her favorite posies.

He’d once nicked a rose like these from her landlady’s garden and Jea—correction, had to remember—Randi had pressed it between the pages of her economics book. “Yes, those exact roses. Destiny, I’d say.” Did she still have the dried flower? What about some of the petals he’d shaken onto her as she lay on the bed their last night together? No, she probably didn’t have any of those mementos. Most likely they’d hit the dustbin later the next evening.

The moment of pending violence passed and Court let the air escape from his lungs as she held the flowers to her nose. “More like the Fates screwing with me again, I’d say.”

For a moment, a pain to rival the anguish he’d felt the last time he’d looked into those eyes stabbed at his heart. At the worst moment of his life, when he’d turned around at that bloody reception, knowing what she’d overheard. He’d never forgotten the look, and it punched him harder now, faced with what he’d given up by bowing under family pressure, and his own conscience, to marry Beatrice. Though judging by Birdie’s age, the bitter thought hit him twice as hard in the gut, Randi hadn’t been down for long. Birdie couldn’t be a full year younger than Drew.

“Mom?”

Court could see Birdie’s curiosity growing by leaps and bounds, and he looked her over once again. Of course, she somewhat resembled her mother. And yet, there was something besides her hair coloring that didn’t quite come from her mother that twigged at the back of his brain. A quality from her father, perhaps? Someone he may have met in the course of business without ever realizing it?

One question answered, his Jeannie’s location, but a few hundred new questions popped into his head. Too many to cope with and not only for him. He could see the turmoil in her as well.

“Yes, darling.” Randi came out of her trance, long lashes sweeping her cheeks as she blinked a few times. “Yes, I met Court when I studied in England. Remember, I told you I did a semester abroad?”

“Why did he know you as Jean?”

Birdie asked the first question at the tip of Court’s tongue, though logic told him exactly why she’d used her middle name, or to be more specific, avoided her first name.

“Come, you can put these in water. I was just getting to the rolls, which are ready to be shaped.” Ignoring the question, Randi Jean—yes, the double name worked better, he decided, as it described how she’d been with him so long ago—thrust the flowers at her daughter, turned, and led the way into the kitchen.

Though she walked away as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough, she spoke over her shoulder. “Gentlemen, may I get you something? We could open a bottle of wine, or I could make tea. Or there’s a fresh pot of coffee ready to brew.”

While entirely proper, the cool, crisp tone to her voice wasn’t one he recognized.

“Have any Earl Grey?” Court couldn’t help asking. It had been her preferred, especially with toasted crumpets slathered in butter and jam. It had become their favorite, their tea. These days, he mainly stuck to a basic blend of black, a Lynford signature, but every so often, he drank a cup of the Earl and remembered, wondering if she ever did the same.

“Not a single leaf. I do have a variety of others. In bags, of course.”

He didn’t remember this brisk, efficient woman. Had she gone through a metamorphosis with the name change? What had the years done to her? And tea bags? Seriously? The woman knew better. Bags were like drinking reconstituted dried coffee crystals. Done only when nothing else could be found and desperation ruled. “Coffee will do.” She’d probably planned coffee all along, and the threat of using a tea bag only ensured she got her way.

“Please, make yourself at home.” She waved a graceful, ring free hand toward a room less formal than the one directly past the foyer.

Visible through an arch, bar stools stood across the counter from the sink. A good spot to perch and chat with the women in the kitchen. Birdie smiled from the sink where she started the water running before turning to lift down a vase from a cabinet.

Birdie.

Strange name. Not for the first time, he wondered about it. A nickname? Randi Jean certainly knew of the slang custom of calling girls birds. So why the name? Court looked closer and wondered if the porcelain skin and honey blond hair came from the girl’s father. Randi Jean had been a strawberry blond when they’d met. Her hair was now a deeper auburn, expertly colored no doubt. Not that he begrudged her a little primping. No, she looked bloody fine for her age. What would she be now…forty-two? Of course, three years younger than he. But enhanced or not, Birdie didn’t have her mother’s coloring. How old was Birdie, anyway?

“You never said, Birdie, where you are at university.” He made himself comfortable on the high oak chair. Drew, like the affable whelp he resembled, settled on the next chair over. The pose was studied to hide the sharp intellect soaking in every detail. Court ignored the question in his son’s eyes for the time being. Randi had her walls up and reinforced, apparently in no mood to catch up on old times. Precisely where he wanted to go, but for now, he’d play the role of guest and stick to superficial conversation. Or rather, hide his penetrating questions in layers of small talk. Now that he’d found her, he had time to ease his way in again.

“I’m in the last semester of my bachelor’s. I’m a semester behind my original schedule because my father died two years ago…” A sad smile graced her sunny face for a moment. “At the start of spring term. Mom wanted me to stay in school, but I took a semester off anyway.”

Court cut his gaze to Randi Jean on the far side of the kitchen. Back to him, she stiffened at her daughter’s recital. A widow. A reasonable explanation for the lack of a wedding ring. He’d certainly shed his as soon as he could after a suitable mourning period.

“And you’re still a semester ahead of your high school friends,” Randi added, while Birdie shrugged and cut stems under running water.

“So, your birthday is when?”

“You know better, Court.” The laughter sounded forced, but Randi Jean turned to him then. “A gentleman never inquires as to the age of a lady, and a lady would never reveal such a detail.” Hands wrapped in her apron, she looked around as if she were trying to figure out where she stood and what needed doing next. She looked everywhere but directly at him. Her gaze skipped right over him as if he were a portrait on the wall, and a not very interesting one at that.

Not happy to see him? Definitely flustered, and a touch uneasy when her attention landed on Drew. Even though Court had met with an investigator yesterday with the express hope of finding Jean, he was off-balance that it had been so easy despite previous years of dead-ended attempts. The different name, and not just married versus maiden, certainly accounted for past failures. How long might he have sought out every Jean Dailey in the U.S. and never found her? The investigator had only stumbled across a tiny article from a small weekly paper a month ago about a woman starting her own CPA business. And yet, his son had most cleverly and unknowingly stumbled on the daughter of the very woman Court wanted to find. Might have to raise the lad’s allowance for that.

Birdie laughed. “You always said you were never a lady, Mom.”

“Now’s as good a time as any for you to start acting like one. So,”—Court watched her gaze bypass him to zero in on Drew—“I hear you’re a grad student at Stanford? What program?”

Clever woman, she’d changed the subject. For now he’d let her. Her house, he’d play her way. Actually, based on this reception, he was surprised she hadn’t pushed him right back out the door, but that would have required explanations she might not want to make. Later, he’d ask the question again.

“International law,” Drew answered readily enough, though his bright eyes didn’t seem to miss much. Court ignored the question Drew silently asked and focused on the women. Randi Jean punched a button on a coffee maker and reached for a bowl perched on top of the refrigerator disguised to look like part of the cabinetry.

“Coffee will be ready in a minute.”

He gave her a genial smile when she glanced his way. “Smells wonderful to me.” He didn’t mind waiting while trying to figure out where she might not want to tread in casual conversation.
Fancy me showing up on your doorstep after all these years, eh Jean? By the way, I didn’t get a chance to tell you how beautiful you looked that night. You know the one, the night you nearly gave me a heart attack by showing up out of nowhere and then running out on me. Shame on you for leaving me at the mercy of those people.
Probably not a good icebreaker. Just a guess.

Tension filled the house as Birdie arranged the roses in a low crystal vase, and Randi Jean used her fists to beat the dough she’d dumped from the large white ceramic bowl onto the floured surface of her granite counters. All while listening to Drew ramble on.

The soft, warm coloring of her kitchen made a perfect background to her beauty, from the adobe colored walls, moss green granite countertops, to the whiskey stained paneling on her cabinets and built in appliances. Without much effort, he could picture the two of them at the tiny café table before the bay windows of the small breakfast nook, looking out on the front lawn of the sprawling ranch-style house. Despite the tension radiating from her, and his urge to make off-color jokes about her name because he still couldn’t adjust to the change in his mind, comfort settled around him as he inhaled the scents of cooking. Coffee, cinnamon, nutmeg, fresh yeast, and a host of other aromas reminded him breakfast had been light.

A visual inspection of the area did bring to his notice a theme. Everywhere, on top of the cabinets, in the cabinets, on top shelves behind glass doors, and set about in decorative arrangements, a mixture of tea pots and service sets. And she didn’t have any loose leaf Earl Grey in the house? A glance over his shoulder showed more displayed on shelves of the massive entertainment center. Pots and tea cups of all sizes, shapes, colors, in every style from Wedgewood to whimsical crowded together in a colorful jumble only an avid collector could arrange. There was a clue here. Court grinned to himself and turned back toward the kitchen. For a heartbeat, his gaze caught hers. She gave every appearance of being unsettled. Angry, hurt, confused, and yet… Abruptly, she looked away. Had that been longing he’d seen? Longing such as had sent him across the Atlantic and the entire North American Continent to find her?