Montana Cowboy (Big Sky Mavericks Book 2) (19 page)

"For being a first-class jerk. I had no right to judge you. I'm sorry. For everything. You and Paul were meant to be together, and I'm happy for you both. The wedding and the baby. Mia told me your baby voted for me to come home." He put a hand out and gently touched her belly. "I plan on being a good uncle. And a friend."

Her smile made him miss Serena more than ever. What was it about a happy woman's smile that could lighten and brighten the world? She gave him a quick hug. "Welcome home. Baby and I are both glad you've decided to stay." She pulled back and looked at him. "You have, right? Decided to stay? I get that question all the time. Figure it's only fair to pass it on to you."

He threw back his head and laughed. "Bring it on. I have my answer down pat."
I came back to be with the woman I love.
But he planned to say the words to Serena first. "But, between us, Serena's the reason I'm here. When I got to Helena, it became very clear very fast that I'm not the person I was when I left."

Her mouth made a pretty O. Her eyes lit up. He could see why Paul was so head-over-heels in love with her. "Serena has that effect on people."

"Why is that?"

She didn't answer right away. "I think it's because she's so damn honest. She knows who she is and what she wants out of life—not fame and fortune, just quality and love. Who doesn't, right? But we all get so wrapped up in the earning a living side of things, we forget why we're working so hard." She gestured toward the alpaca pens. "Maybe the animals keep her grounded."

Austen agreed. He hadn't expected his future sister-in-law to be so philosophical but he couldn't argue with her theory. He'd held a newborn alpaca in his arms, felt its racing heartbeat. Nothing in Helena could compare. "You could be right. When does she get back?"

"Any minute."

"Mia said she went to Portland to see her brother."

Bailey hesitated a moment, then said, "After she drove to Astoria, a little town on the Oregon coast, to meet her birth mother, who, apparently, is ill and not long for this world, hence the stalking thing."

She delivered the whole speech with increasing speed, as if she regretted sharing the news but once she committed to the task couldn't stop herself.

Austen grabbed the fence post. Not because he was stunned by the news, although he was. His fingers tightened. "Damn. I should have been here for her." He slammed the heel of his hand against the post then stalked a few feet away, pivoted and returned, Beau at his heels. "Serena's birth mother turns out to be her stalker and where am I? Wallowing in indecision in Helena. Why didn't she tell me?"

Bailey held out her hands in the universal sign of 'who knows?' "She didn't want to bother you, I guess. But if it makes you feel any better, she told me you're the reason she went. That you were brave enough to go back and deal with your old baggage, so how could she be a coward and try to pretend her birth mother didn't exist?"

Almost as if on cue, the shiny new gate at the head of the driveway opened and an older model Dodge pickup pulled in. Bailey waved excitedly then called to Chloe, "Time to go, honey girl. Walk Gus to the barn. We'll brush him and give him water, and then we have to get back home. Tomorrow's a school day."

S
eeing Austen jog toward her, Beau at his heels was a sight Serena hadn't dared hope to see during her long drive home. Austen here. Waiting for her. Her hand shook as she opened the door and hopped out of the cab of the truck, leaving everything right where it was.

"You're here," Austen said, his eyes telling her just what she needed to know.

"I'm home." She walked into his open arms and knew the moment she pressed her cheek to his chest she'd spoken the most basic of all truths. This was her man. Her forever. Her home.

They stayed locked in a silent embrace for a good minute, absorbing each other, preparing for the words that needed to be said. Love was one thing, Serena had learned this weekend. Reality, quite another.

"You met your mother."

"My birth mother."

"How did it go? Are you okay? I'm sorry I wasn't there with you."

She took a deep breath and let it out. She'd had a nice long drive to think about how to answer the inevitable questions that would come. "I'm good. Better than I imagined I'd be if this day ever came. Isn't it funny how you create scenarios in your imagination and then the real life experience is so different? The good news is: she isn't evil or horrible or someone to be ashamed of."

He took her hand and led her to the picnic table. Once they were seated across from each other, he asked, "What's her story? Why'd she give you up?"

"She ran over my birth father with a car. She insists it was an accident. She meant to hit him because he was coming at her with a gun, but she didn't mean to kill him. She was five months pregnant at the time. To avoid a long trial—and public sentiment wasn't on the side of battered women at the time, she accepted a plea bargain. Vehicular manslaughter, instead of murder." The words sounded so stark, so awful that she quickly added, "Part of the agreement allowed her to remain free on bail until my birth."

"Do you believe her—about the accident?"

Serena shrugged. "I think so. Does it matter? It was a long time ago and she paid a heavy price. She gave birth, signed the adoption papers then went to prison the next day."

He shook his head. "That's a lot to take in. Did your parents know her story?"

"Some of it. Mom said they chose not to tell me because they didn't want that stigma to be part of my identity. But they didn't actually meet my birth mother. Her name is Miranda Lewis." She couldn't say the name without a bittersweet sense of pity and loss putting pressure on her throat. She tried to smile. "Doesn't that sound like a country-western singer to you?"

He didn't reply to her question but the sympathy in his eyes was nearly her undoing. She quickly added the odd coincidence that had caught Serena's attention. "She spent most of her sentence at the Women's Prison in Chowchilla, California."

He glanced toward the barn. "Wasn't Bailey living in Chowchilla before she moved here?"

She turned to watch Bailey and Chloe fussing over the horse Austen must have ridden from his place. She pictured their first meeting. The instant mutual attraction. Their flirting. The heat and passion of their first kiss. Did the gesture mean something?

"Small world," he said, his gaze returning to her eyes.

"I thought the same thing. Crazy how connected we all are."

"What does Miranda do now?"

"Retired. She started taking college classes in prison. As soon as she was released, she went to work for a non-profit that helps women in abusive situations. Eventually, she got her master's degree and was in charge of several non-profits."

"That's impressive."

Serena agreed, but she also understood her birth mother's motivation. "Miranda said this was her way of giving back and making amends. She never married and never had any more kids."

He reached for her hand again. "Bailey said she's sick."

"Emphysema, C.O.P.D., and asthma. Her lungs are shot. She's on oxygen pretty much all the time. She's moving into an assisted living center later this month. She's made arrangements to be cremated, and her close friends are going to spread her ashes in the ocean. She asked me not to come back."

Serena tried to keep the hurt from her tone, but Austen lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. "Why?"

Talking about death with the lovely stranger who'd given Serena life had been the most difficult part of this whole experience. The heavy weight on her chest made her voice come out low and scratchy. "She said she wanted to meet me, not for her sake so much—I think she made peace with the past a long time ago—but for mine. She'd put together a written history of her life and her family. Both her parents are gone and her one sister died of cervical cancer in her early forties. Miranda wanted me to be vigilant."

She closed her eyes and sighed. "She talked about my birth father. She called him the love of her life. She blamed the military for his problems. She didn't go into details, but something happened that left him suffering from PTSD." She nodded toward the truck. "I have boxes of genealogy records, old photos, birth certificates and a few family mementos she wanted me to have. But she was adamant that I am not supposed to mourn her death. She said, 'That's reserved for your real parents.'"

He shook his head slowly from side-to-side. She read the empathy in his eyes. "Wow, sweetheart. That's a lot to take in. How do you feel about meeting her?"

"Better than I expected. I felt sad when I left Astoria, but at peace, too."

"What does your family say?"

"Mack's proud of me. Peyton is glad I don't have a stalker."

"Have you looked at any of the stuff she gave you?"

She shook her head. "Not yet. Mom and Dad are planning to come for a visit in a few weeks. I might wait and go through it with them. Dad loves puzzles, and finding the missing pieces of my past will probably make him very happy."

"Are you happy?"

She decided to be honest. "For the first half of the drive back, I couldn't stop thinking about Miranda. She fell in love with the wrong man and, then, stayed with him even after she realized she couldn't fix him. By the time she tried to get away to protect her unborn baby, his fixation had escalated. My birth father became a stalker. Talk about irony, right?"

She didn't give him time to answer. "There weren't a lot of resources for abused women in those days. Desperation is a breeding ground for mistakes. Miranda was as much a victim as my birth father."

The sound of a car's engine made her turn to look over her shoulder. Bailey and Chloe drove slowly, both waving and blowing kisses. Serena let go of Austen's hand to make the universal telephone-to-ear gesture, so Bailey knew they'd talk soon.

She watched the gate close behind the SUV.
I don't have a stalker, anymore. I don't need a gate to protect me.

Just one of the many significant life changes she was still figuring out.

"How come your birth mother didn't contact you directly when she found you? Why go the stalker route?"

"I asked her that. She said, 'It's complicated.' My guess is: fear. Although she's accomplished a lot in her life, she still carries around a heavy burden of guilt. I'm not sure she believes she deserves forgiveness."

"But you have forgiven her, haven't you?"

She looked at him several heartbeats before answering. He knew her well—better than anyone, she acknowledged. But would he understand what she was about to tell him? "Yes. Because in the heat of passion, we often make choices we come to regret later."

She saw the hesitation in his eyes. "Are you speaking from experience?"

"The second half of my drive was a reality check where you and I are concerned. I never meant for this thing between us to get serious, Austen. Look around. You know the ark of baggage that moved here with me—and, now, there's a dying birth mother to add to the mix. If you were smart, you'd jump on that horse of yours and ride away as fast as possible."

"What if I already packed up my condo in Helena and put it on the market?"

"But you just went back as the prodigal son redeemed. Shari Fast said you were born for that job."

"That shows how little she knows me. She hasn't lived my life or walked in my boots...for want of a better metaphor. I
live
here. In Marietta. And I’m done apologizing for that. I want to be near my family, which includes fifty fuzzy faces. I missed the alpacas. I missed your dog. Most of all, I missed you."

"What are you saying?"

He took both her hands in his and leaned across the table to look straight into her eyes.

"I love you, Serena James. I want to marry you."

The words set off a crazy explosion of conflicting emotions inside her head and heart. Fear of making the same sort of mistakes that ruined her birth mother's life battled with her desire to share the kind of forever love her adoptive parents showed her every day of her life.

"Umm...that sort of question generally has a more immediate response," Austen prompted. "Yes? No? Maybe?"

She seized on the out he'd given her.

"Maybe. Definitely. Positively. A very strong maybe."

He sat back in shock. "What?"

She laughed because her heart suddenly embraced a truth she hadn't seen as an option until now. "I love you, Austen. You are the most amazing man I've ever met. But I can't marry you. Not yet, anyway."

"Why?"

She looked down, trying to find the words to make him understand. "A week ago, I would have said that finding my birth mother would have no bearing whatsoever on me—on the course of my life. But I was wrong. I can't fuse my life with yours until I figure out what part of Miranda Lewis is in me."

He got up and walked to her side of the table. He helped her turn so they could sit side-by-side. "I can tell you that without even meeting her. There's the mentor who helps lost souls abandoned by the system. The mother bear who risks everything to protect her baby—or her 'pacas. The artist who celebrates the beauty in life's simple things."