Secrets (38 page)

“This is a new development of one-acre lots about to be put on the market.”

“Oh.”

“It has about ten lots, and a shared private beach access,” he said, pointing at the beach below them.

“Okay.”

“And I was thinking of buying one.”

“Buying one?”

“Yeah. I was thinking what better place would there be to wake up, than to this view?”

“I can’t imagine.” Sarah threw up her hands. Her tone sounded lost.

“And besides, Cookie needs a yard to run in. But it kind of depends on a few things.”

“What?”

“Well, I was hoping you’d help me out a bit.”

“Help you out how?”

“You know, pick a house to build and what to put in it.”

“You want me to help you build a house? Here?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? What does that mean?”

“Well, that or you could come with me to LA”

She shook her head. “Scott, what is going on? A house? LA? What is this?”

“Your friend Brett felt so bad about ignoring my calls last year he got me a sitting with some big music execs. Which he seemed to think I’d want. Where he got that idea I can only imagine,” Scott said, his tone dry.

Sarah ducked her head. “I might have mentioned it. Brett did hear you sing on his own. So what? You might have a chance in music?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to?”

“No, I don’t really want to. My girlfriend’s idea for me to start my own business restoring cars has turned out to be pretty profitable, so as far as I’m concerned, I’m set. But if you want me to, if you want to go for it in Los Angeles, we can.”

“We?”

He snorted. “What did you think all this was? For me alone?”

“You’d do that for me?”

“I’d do anything for you,” he said quietly.

“So, you want me to go to LA with you to be a singer, which I’m convinced you’d make a fortune at. Or you want to stay, and we build a house here? While you and I continue with the jobs we already have.”

“That’s about it.”

“Wouldn’t I be crazy to say stay here?”

“Probably.”

“I might be crazy.”

“But there’s one more thing, Sarah.”

“What?”

He pulled a box out of his pocket and extended it toward her. She took it and then looked up at him, her fingers shaking, her eyes huge, her mouth open in shock.

“Are you asking me to marry you?”

He smiled. “Well, I was about to ask you that. As usual, you beat me to it. But yes, I want to marry you. Will you be my wife?”

She swallowed visibly and shook her head. He laughed. For once she seemed to be speechless.

“Why don’t you open that up?” He pointed at the box, and she fumbled to open it, and then she looked up with tear-filled eyes. He plucked the box from her inert grasp, took the ring out, and put it on her finger.

“I want to stay here. I want to live here, my dreams are here.”

“Mine are wherever you are.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure? About what? You? You and Angie are the only things I’ve ever been sure about in my life.”

“I want this. Just what you described. A house here, free of Vanessa, free of my parents. Free of all but us.”

“And maybe a kid or two.”

“I thought you didn’t want kids, having raised Angie for so long.”

“Well, turns out the complete picture is you, me, and maybe a kid or two or three. We’ll see.”

She threw her arms around his neck and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I love you. You’ll see, we’ll do it right, all of it. We won’t be like our parents. No more secrets, no more lies, just us.”

He looked into her eyes. “I ever tell you I never loved anyone like I do you?”

“A time or two.” She grinned.

He grinned back. “And together, we
will
get everything right.”

If you liked
Secrets
, you’ll want to read the next in the series—
Seclusion
. Here’s a sample:

Chapter One

“Angie? Is that you?”

Angie Peters whipped around, startled by the squeaky child’s voice. Her heart stopped, and her palms grew sweaty. Amy Tyler, her eight-year-old daughter—her biological daughter who she had not seen in two years—stood a few feet in front of her holding a little red plastic shovel. Sand clung to her knees, turning her jeans wet and dark where she must have been kneeling in the sand.

Angie had known there was a good chance she’d run into Amy when she came back here to her home town of Seaclusion, Washington. She just hadn’t known it would be this soon. Angie had come to the ocean beach to take in the blue sky over the frothy, rolling surf as she tried to prepare her heavy heart for facing the history here. And most of that history was tied up in the small, blond package peering up at her.

Angie pressed her lips together and slowly expelled a breath. “Hi, Amy. How are you?”

Amy’s golden hair was down to her waist. Her blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight, and she was missing a front tooth. Her daughter was tall and skinny for her age, much as Angie had been. They looked painstakingly alike. It twisted her heart in two. How could an accident of biology replicate her so completely? The difference, however, was that Amy was a happy, well-adjusted, giggling little girl who twitched around as she smiled cheekily and said, “Mom and me were making a sand castle over there. Wanna see it?”

“I would love to come see it.” Amy easily inserted her hand into Angie’s and pulled her toward the pile of sand she had shaped into a giant pyramid.

“See, here it is.” She grinned and dropped to her knees, digging at the wet, dark sand to create a moat around it. Reality was easy for Amy. She had known her entire young life that Angie Peters was her biological mother, but her real mother, the mother who counted, was her adoptive mom, Kelly Tyler. Angie was simply a fun, older sister-like figure to her.

Two beach chairs sat back from the sand, protected from the breezy afternoon by the sand dunes. Kelly stood, her long legs stretching as she stepped toward Angie. A slow smile slid over her face. “We thought that was you. Amy has eyes like a hawk. What are you doing in town? Sarah didn’t mention you were coming to visit.”

Kelly embraced Angie. Angie closed her eyes and leaned into Kelly’s shoulder. The eager welcome was something she expected from Kelly. Too bad her own mother would never greet her in such a manner, something that, to this day, broke her heart.

“Sarah and Scott don’t know I’m here. It’s a surprise.” Sarah was Kelly’s best friend and married to Angie’s uncle who had raised her. They were the only real family she had.

Kelly pushed her back, her eyes narrowed, taking in the wet sheen of Angie’s eyes. Kelly squeezed her hands. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Just tired. I finished up finals. I decided to come see everyone. How are you? How is Amy?”

Kelly glanced at Amy with a loving gaze and slight tilt to her lips. “I’m good. Amy’s perfect. She loves second grade, is starting to read chapter books now. It’s pretty hard to get used to. She found her birthday list last year and could read it before I realized it.”

What would Angie do if she were Amy’s mother? What would she do for her birthday? How would she handle teaching Amy to read? Kelly’s gaze landed back on her. “You don’t seem okay.”

Angie shrugged. “The older I get, the harder it gets.”

“Because now if you were pregnant with Amy you could keep her?”

She should not answer. Amy’s adoptive parents were the most inappropriate people to talk with about her doubts about giving up her daughter. But Kelly saw things, surprising things, and never backed down from confronting them.

“Yes.”

“You know Luke and I could use a night out together. Why don’t you give me a call when you’re settled, maybe you could babysit for us?”

Angie’s gaze touched Kelly’s. “You’d do that?”

“Yes. I’d do that.” Kelly’s voice was so gentle it made Angie’s heart swell. She’d made the right decision in giving her daughter to this woman.

“Thank you.”

Luke and Kelly Tyler had raised and loved Amy as Angie couldn’t, because at sixteen when she gave birth to Amy, she hadn’t had the slightest clue what to do with a baby. And to date, the only role she’d played in Amy’s happiness and well-being was giving her to the Tylers. The rest was all her parents’ doing. And the way that knowledge twisted up her heart with pain and jealously should have subsided by now. But it hadn’t. It seemed like maybe it never would.

She could have given Amy up to anyone, any couple who lived far away from her home town. She had purposely chosen Luke and Kelly, simply because she’d wanted Amy close. Close but not hers. Close so that she could make sure nothing bad happened to her as a result of who she picked to be her parents.

Amy’s head popped up from her crouched position. “Do you want to help me make a bridge?” Her big, eager eyes were pinned on Angie. Angie glanced at Kelly for permission. Kelly smiled and nudged her forward. “Go ahead or she’ll be at us all day until she gets it just right. Our little drill sergeant.”

That right there, the loving guidance and warmth was everything that Angie’s own life had always lacked, and why she had known, even at sixteen, that she couldn’t raise her baby. She’d never had a motherly influence in her entire life. Her mother, Vanessa Peters, was about as motherly as a fish to its young. Vanessa had always been critical, inattentive, and the last person she ever turned to for anything. Even now, when she came to town, she stayed with Scott and Sarah. She rarely visited her mother.

Scott had saved her life, and saved her from Vanessa. Scott had been her primary parental figure since she was ten years old. He still treated her as one of his daughters, even though she was now twenty-four.

“I’d love to help you with your sand castle.” Angie dropped to her knees and helped Amy pack down sand and scoop out under the precarious bridge structure.

“Hey, is that beautiful blonde Angie Peters?”

Angie smiled and turned toward the voice carrying to her from down the beach. She got up and wiped her sandy hands on her jeans. “Hey, Mr. Tyler.”

He grimaced. She couldn’t help it; she could not call him by his name no matter how many times he told her to. Mr. Tyler had been her math teacher for four years of high school. She’d given up her baby to him at the end of her sophomore year. He’d taught her for two more years. It had been stranger than any other relationship in her life. One day he would tell her to do her homework, the next he’d comment on how the daughter she’d given him was doing. Talk about surreal.

“You’re not sixteen anymore. You can call me Luke.”

At forty-three, Mr. Tyler was still blond, blue-eyed, and ripped. He didn’t look his age. But Angie could not get to a casual place with him. She shook her head. “No, I can’t.”

He smiled. “So, kiddo, what are you doing in town?”

“Just visiting.”

He eyed her. He didn’t believe her either. “Okay. You’ll be sure to visit us?”

She smiled. Nodded. Almost said,
yes sir
. But stopped herself.

“I’d better get to my uncle’s.”

“Hey, Amy, come give Angie a hug bye.”

Angie almost kissed Mr. Tyler for his kindness, and the casual way he went about letting Amy have a relationship with her. Amy ran up, threw her arms around Angie, kissed her cheek, and then ran off again giggling, smiling, girlish. And okay. She was just fine in her life, and Angie’s place in it.

But what Angie most hated about herself was she should be grateful, when in fact what she felt was jealous. Jealous it wasn’t her who had been able to give Amy any of this.

****

Angie parked her Prius in the long driveway running up to the rambling one-story house that her uncle and Sarah lived in. The bright, blue February sky was a lovely backdrop to the red brick and soft mint green color of the Delanos’ house. They lived in a new development, all on one-acre lots that sat on a bluff over the Pacific Ocean. A community trail led down to a private beach for residents of the neighborhood. Trees blocked the ocean view from her uncle’s house, but there was a spot halfway down the trail that overlooked the Pacific—a view she avoided because she hated the ocean.

She should have called before coming here. Hopefully, the Delanos would welcome her, despite the surprise. She jumped out of her car and started up the walkway. Halfway up the drive, a car roared up behind her. She whipped around. A cherry-red restored Pontiac Trans Am pulled to a stop, shiny and new-like in polished perfection. The motor was so loud she could feel the rumble of it in her cheeks. Her stomach flopped; Sean Langston sat in the driver’s seat.

Sean’s legs appeared first, and then the entire length of him extended from the car. She took a step back. Why did it have to be him? Besides Amy, Sean was the absolute last person she wanted to run into her first day back in Seaclusion. She knew she’d have to face him, but usually she had time to prepare herself for the inevitable confrontation. Being Sarah’s little brother, he was often at the Delanos’ and therefore, when she visited she had to contend with him. That he was Amy’s biological father only made it a hundred times more awkward.

He was no doubt driving one of her uncle’s cars. Scott restored vintage cars; his business took up the large metal shop that was on the other half of the acre they owned. Scott’s cars could run upwards of a hundred thousand dollars for a single restored car. He had started the business at Sarah’s prompting and now, nearly eight years later, his reputation was well respected all along the west coast. His name was recognized as far off as Seattle and down through San Francisco for the work he did. When Sean turned twenty-one, he had started working for Scott.

Sean was tall and wiry thin. He would be almost model beautiful, if it wasn’t for the fact that he did everything not to be. He kept his brown hair too long and shaggy, his clothes ripped and work-worn. Today he looked even more scruffy than usual with his hat on backwards and the ends of his hair sticking out from a stubby ponytail. She hated his ponytail.

He got out of the car and his gold-hued eyes narrowed as his gaze traveled over her. An insolent smile crossed his lips. “Well, well if it isn’t the prodigal Angie Peters back from her big important life.”