Her Unexpected Affair (The Robinsons) (38 page)

This must be a delusion leftover from last night’s dreams. The ones brought on by the romance novel she’d found in a box last week. The one sitting on her bedside table still exuding the soft scent of the rose pressed between the pages of the love scene. He’d been invading her thoughts too much lately. He couldn’t really be here, in her foyer. This scene was purely a figment of a mind set to wandering by plain old loneliness.

Randi grasped Birdie’s arm, holding her as much to stay standing as to keep Birdie from moving to the side of the younger man. There was no way God would play this cruel a joke on her after so many years. Yet, as she stared into those blue, blue eyes, the years peeled away.

“Jean is my mother’s middle name,” Birdie supplied helpfully, despite her apparent confusion, breaking the silence that had held for nearly a full minute. Words abandoned Randi, leaving her throat too tight, too dry for speech. “Her full name is Randi Jean Dailey Ferguson.”

Hell, no point in trying to hide her true identity now, as if that had ever been a remote possibility. Not only did Birdie give it all away, she babbled to fill in the extremely awkward silence.

The gaze of the apparition who resembled, well,
him
, sharpened, and his lips quirked in satisfaction. The heat of his regard wouldn’t allow Randi to deny the exceedingly male presence in her house. All the air evaporated from the foyer, and her heart kick started so hard it threatened to leap from her chest. Her mind might be screaming denials, but her body knew. And despite the first sluicing of ice through her veins, heat rushed in behind.

Those damn blue eyes stared into hers, and a spark of something ancient and irrepressible settled in her heart, causing it to beat triple time.

Yup. God was that cruel.

From her past, the one man she never once imagined she’d ever see again stood in her foyer. Impossible that he should have found her. Dad would have never given her away had anyone knocked on his door looking for her. Google searches on the various combinations of her name turned up little other than notices in school newsletters. All those years ago she’d married, changed her name, given birth, and moved from the parental home to start a new life as a new woman. The girl he’d known as Jean Dailey became Randi Ferguson. All the heartache of betrayal had been left far behind in Merry Old England more than twenty-two years ago. The only reminder? The nearly twenty-two-year-old beauty standing at her side. The child who towered over her, so like her father, if the truth be known.

All those years ago, God had held her feet to the fire to face her future, but this time she faced the past. And why did that past still have to be so damn handsome?

No, not a hallucination. He was real. So very, very real.

It was him, looking barely five years older than he had so long ago. His thick hair still gleamed gold under the soft glow from the skylight, though there were hints of silver at his temples, and his forehead seemed a tad higher. Great, gray looked good on him. He was still lean, his eyes remained as piercingly blue. Light blue that looked right into her soul. His face had filled out a little, developed a few lines at the eyes, and the cheekbones were no longer quite so prominent, the jaw a slightly smoothed granite instead of freshly chiseled stone, but essentially the same.

Yes, he still looked the same while she’d grown rounder and squatter. Thank heavens for the impulse that sent her to the salon a week ago. At least she wasn’t gray. At the moment. And of course, makeup, underwires, and Lycra hid a multitude of other imperfections.

Whereas he… Well, he looked damn fine in his light blue tailored shirt, gold cufflinks, perfect navy slacks, and expensive leather shoes.

Just like his son.

She wanted to push them out of her house right then, send them both back to England, far, far away from Birdie.

Oh, no, no, no. This did not fit with Randi’s plans. She needed to regain control of the situation. Time. She needed time. Yes, she’d planned to tell Birdie all about this part of her past, but after Christmas. Before the New Year. After getting some more information from an investigative resource. Not like this, not now. Lord, not now! When Birdie was already looking at her as if she’d lost her mind.

Control. Right. Shut the rest away and pretend there was nothing going on. Randi eased up on her daughter’s arm when she murmured a protest.

Oh God. Birdie’s attracted to
… She couldn’t complete the thought too horrible to think.

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.”

Shea McMaster
lives for traditional romance. Born in New Orleans, raised in California, Shea got moved to Alaska in 1977, where she attended high school before running back to California to get her English degree from Mills College. Alas, once back home she met and fell in love with her own forever true hero, a born and raised Alaska man. Since then she’s had a love-hate relationship with America’s largest state.

With her one and only son through college, and out of the house, Shea is fortunate to spend her days with her fur baby, engaged in daydreaming and turning those dreams into romantic novels and novellas featuring damsels in distress rescued by their own brains and hunky heroes. She also writes steamy romances under the name Morgan O’Reilly.

Discover more about Shea at sheamcmaster.com, and on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shea-McMaster/240251469328338