The Hiding Place (32 page)

A movement out in back caught Tara’s eye. Thank God, not Laird but Nick up in the tree line, squatting with Beamer at his side. She had the oddest urge to wave, but that might bring him running. For once, she was grateful to be spied on.

“Jen, what were you going to tell me? You and Laird had a fight?”

“Mmm. Over kids. More of ’em. Jennifer DeMar Lohan, M.D., specialty ob-gyn’s having trouble having kids. It’s even in our prenup that I get an extra fifty thousan’ a year in my pers’nal account for each child we have. Ha!”

“But you gave him a son.”

Jen narrowed her eyes and seemed to sober a bit as she drew herself up to a sitting position. “You should not be here, Tara. You have to go.”

“He wants more children, but you’re having trouble conceiving?”

“Don’t give me that social worker, do-gooder, I-care look!” Jen shrieked so loudly Tara jumped. “You hate me, an’ you should! But I couldn’t help wanting him, an’ you didn’t.”

Tara jerked as Jen heaved her glass against the wall next to the wide glass window. Glass shattered, ice and liquor flew, streaking the pine paneling. Tara had the urge to pick up the glass shards; the little boy could cut himself. But she forced herself back to business. She’d rehearsed a hundred things to say. Now she wanted both to beat Jen to the ground and to put her arm around her. She’d spent too long helping women whose men had hurt them. But, above all, she needed to know about her own child.

“Jen, please tell me about my baby’s birth. What went wrong? I just need to know—for closure, as they say. You understand that.”

Jen propped her elbows on the bar and pressed her face in her hands so her words came out muffled. “Hell of a night. Lots of snow. Cold. Your primary-care doctor lightened your medicine so you could help push. I tried to help, to be there for you. Honest.”

Maybe it was the doctor training coming out, but Jen didn’t sound drunk anymore. “Go on,” Tara whispered when she paused. Jen put her hands flat on the bar as if to prop herself up and just stared off into space. Tara had to fight the urge to ask about the medicine they gave her to keep her comatose, but this was more important.

“Jen, go on,” she prompted.

“Never thought you’d go to full term, of course. Pretty rare. Laird was ecstatic.”

For himself, not me, Tara almost blurted, but she controlled her voice to ask calmly, “So, for the birth, you needed me more conscious?”

“We used different drugs that night from the ones being used to give your brain time to heal. For labor, you were in a kind of twilight, lighter coma,” she said, her voice sounding as if she were reciting something in a formal lecture. “Years ago, they used to put women out entirely to deliver. I tried to tell you that we were going to do a vaginal delivery. That you had to help. And you did.”

Silence. Wind outside, a clock ticking somewhere inside.

“Then what happened?” Tara asked.

Jen cleared her throat. “Umbilical cord around the neck—her neck. In the delivery, strangled. She got wedged—that’s it.”

Tara sucked in a sob. “Which a cesarian section could have avoided?” she blurted.

Jen shook her head so hard she almost tilted off the stool. Tara pushed her shoulder to keep her on it, then pulled her hand back as if that touch had burned her. “Happened too quick, too late,” Jen said in a rush. “The thing is, when we tried to revive the baby in the other room, then had to—to prepare her—Laird went berserk…”

Tara saw it all. The panic and confusion. A comatose woman, a dead child for Laird—and Jordan. Jen, guilty, horrified, yet pregnant herself with Laird’s child. The entire nightmare leaped back into this room now.

“And then,” Tara choked out, “I got out and wandered the grounds.”

“Yes, I forgot. Someone found you and brought you back. Hemorrhaging, but I stopped that—maybe saved your life.”

“Saved it after you let me wander out into the snow to bleed to death in the first place. Maybe,” Tara said, getting right in Jen’s face, “I went looking for the child you were preparing to secretly get rid of. Or maybe I was out of my mind with pain and grief and was looking for whoever let her die.”

Jen burst into tears. “I’m so sorry, so sorry,” she sobbed, putting her head down on her arms. “Sorry I got into any of this.”

How could she say that when she had a beautiful son? Tara wondered, unless she meant getting mixed up with Laird.

“Then help me find the other attending doctor—Dr. Givern—now, Jen. Get me his address or phone number or e-mail. I know he’s in Europe. To have some sort of closure, I need to speak with him, just to know what happened.”

“It was all wrong, not to tell you, but you’d been through so much—and then Laird and I—it just happened. And then he started to turn against me when I want children just as desperately as he does. I’m seeing a fertility specialist, the best, but that’s not good enough for him, and I want so much to have his baby…”

“You have, Jen, a precious Lohan son!” Tara cried, feeling furious again. “Just give it time. Hell, I even had one when I was on birth control!”

“You weren’t,” she said, fumbling for a tissue in the pocket of her slacks and blowing her nose. Her eyes were swollen; she looked unsteady again. Would Laird lock her up in the clinic until she got off booze? Who would care for little Jordie then? But what was that she’d just said?
You weren’t on birth control?

“What do you mean?”

“What?”

“What do you mean I wasn’t on birth control? You yourself prescribed and even gave me the tablets.”

She shook her head so hard, tears flew. “Sugar pills. Laird asked me to substitute—”

Tara didn’t hear what else she said. She wasn’t sure if she threw herself off the stool or fell off in shock, but she grabbed the edge of the bar to steady herself. Laird had set her up to get pregnant, despite the fact she’d told him she wanted to wait until they’d solved their problems! All that sudden understanding and sweetness those last months, all that sex. Suddenly, it hardly mattered if he was sleeping with Jen that early or not, because either way, such deceit was the ultimate betrayal of their marriage vows. Laird had impregnated Tara, then—maybe as a backup—seduced and impregnated Jen, too. She wanted to hate this woman, but she only pitied her, another Laird Lohan victim, even as little Sarah had been.

Yes, the one she really hated, the one she wanted to suffer, was Laird Lohan. And suddenly there he was, coming in the front door, in the flesh, with his son in his arms.

“T
ara!” Laird exploded, so loudly his son cringed. “That’s your truck down the road? What in hell are you doing here? Why didn’t you just call?”

Tara crossed her arms over her chest. “Because you never would have invited me to your hiding place for the inquisition I have planned.”

“Mommy, I back,” Jordie said with a wave at Jen standing behind her. Tara’s insides cartwheeled; it looked as if the child waved at her. Laird did not put him down. “I hitted a ball with a long stick,” the little boy said proudly, now openly studying Tara. Chocolate ice cream or candy was smeared on his upper lip. Despite her building rage at Laird, she smiled at the boy.

“That’s good, Jordie. Really good,” was all Jen said, still making no move to go to Laird or her child.

“Mommy crying?” he asked.

“Mommy’s all right, Jordie,” Laird clipped out. “She’s just tired.”

“She’s just tired,” Jordie repeated, but his lower lip thrust out as if he would pout or cry.

Laird looked as strikingly handsome as ever, but he had noticeably aged. More silver hair at the temples; frown lines etched deeper on his chiseled face that now, compared to Nick’s open, rugged countenance, seemed hard and haughty.

“I needed to speak with you and Jen to settle some things,” Tara said, keeping her voice calm.

“You came alone?” he asked, again loudly.

She decided not to answer that. “You’re upsetting your son. He’s a great-looking kid. Was our little Sarah, too?”

“Dad said you had named her that.” He walked around Tara to Jen and started to hand Jordie, who was now sucking his thumb, to Jen. Evidently, when he smelled her breath, he drew the child back. Frowning even more, he kept such a tight hold on the boy that Jordie winced and fidgeted.

Jordie’s face drew Tara’s gaze. Unlike in the photos, where his eyes looked bluish-green, she saw their color was the clearest emerald, just like her Irish grandmother’s eyes—and hers. Tara’s hair had been curly, too, when she was young. As Laird had tipped the boy down to hand him to Jen, Tara had noted that his hair looked strangely reddish at the roots. Why would they dye a little boy’s hair unless…unless…And why had they moved so suddenly far away when the Lohans were such a tightly knit clan and when she knew Laird would love to flaunt his son and heir in his brother’s face? Had Laird and Jen even been back to Colorado since they’d left or had everyone kept coming here, even for family photo shoots?

Could she have had twins, one who died and one who—No, that was impossible. Yet, she was dealing with the Lohans.

Tara trembled as she tried not to stare at the child, tried not to reach out to touch him. It couldn’t be that Jordie was hers.

“Daddy, put me down,” Jordie said, squirming. “Put me down!”

But Laird gave him a bounce and kept him in his arms.

“If you’re here with that Special Ops guy or whatever he is,” Laird said, “you’d better find him and get going.”

“He’s a civilian who served with them,” she said, not giving ground, unlike Jen, who had retreated to the bar to pour herself another drink. Tara wondered if Nick could see all of them from his vantage point, and if he’d stay outside as he’d promised until she gave him a sign. “But
you,
” she said, emphasizing each word and pointing at Laird to punctuate her words, “are the real special ops guy.”

“I don’t know what the hell you mean. My wife and I need to talk, so I’m asking you to—”

“You’d rather my attorney just contact yours, and that I go to the Denver and Seattle newspapers to get sympathy for my civil suit?” she brazened. She was getting more frustrated and furious by the minute, but she didn’t raise her voice so she wouldn’t scare the child. She was almost afraid to look at him again, because all the other questions she had to ask were beginning to fade next to the new obsession growing inside her. Jen was blond with blue eyes. Did someone in the Lohan clan have green eyes and red, curly hair?

“Don’t try to threaten me,” Laird said, finally putting the little boy down on the beige rug next to the sofa and blocking her view of him, though Jordie peeked around Laird’s legs at her.

“I realize you and Daddy Dearest are masters at that, Laird, but all the things you’ve been throwing at me are starting to stick—not to me, to you. The police are in on it since your father’s lackey Marcie Goulder took a header out of the helicopter. Could Jen please take Jordie into the other room?”

Laird sank onto the couch and said, “Jennifer, take the boy into our bedroom and don’t drop him again, or so help me, God…”

“You’re the one who needs help from God, Laird,” Jen said, smacking her glass on the bar and stalking over to scoop Jordie up. “But I doubt if He wants to have anything to do with you, either.”

Tara watched as Jen carried Jordie from the room. She continued to stand so that Nick could still see her, but her gaze was on those wide, green eyes of the little boy. His thumb in his mouth, he was looking at her, too, over Jen’s shoulder, until they disappeared down the hall, and Jen slammed a door.

“All I have to say to you, Tara, is that you’re babbling nonsense!” Laird insisted. “I have no idea what any of this is about. No one’s out to hurt anyone, including you.”

“You may not be directly behind the Whetstone and Goulder deaths, but your father certainly is. Ask him about a boulder that just missed me at Red Rocks when I was meeting your mother there, just before she got stashed incommunicado in the Lohan Clinic again.”

“Calm down. Sit. Please,” he said, patting the seat beside him.

“I’ll stand.”

He leaned away from her, arms stretched along the back of the sofa, one leg crossed over the other knee, obviously trying to look nonchalant and cocksure of himself.

“Tara, I can understand that you’re distraught over the fact I didn’t tell you about our daughter’s death.”

“Or her existence. For which you are fully responsible, since you had Jen tamper with my birth control pills.”

His head jerked a bit. “My, my, you two
have
been having a heart-to-heart.”

“But you know what?” she demanded, ignoring his sarcasm. “Even though I didn’t want a child, I at least cherish her memory. And if she hadn’t been taken—
stolen
—from me, I’d have been a great, loving mother. But you already had baby-maker number two lined up, didn’t you? Divorce one, marry the other. Keep me comatose to suit your schedule so I won’t get in your way, just cremate Sarah’s body, stash her ashes in a rural crypt, and don’t even tell her mother or grandmother, let alone legally register her birth or death!”

“Leave my mother out of this! I’m worried sick that she’s gone missing somehow, and Dad says he thinks you know where she is. Get out of my house and leave me and my wife and child alone.”

He’d said those words with control but also with menace. Yet she wasn’t backing off. “Jordie’s chin looks like yours, but I don’t see a resemblance other than that,” she went on, propping her fists on her hips. “Green eyes and hair the color of—”

“Of Jennifer’s,” he interrupted, leaning forward to cross his arms over his knees. “I was only trying to protect you from more grief by keeping silent about Sarah’s death. I’m sure we can come to some sort of suitable financial arrangement for your loss, set you up for life with your P.I. firm, get a dog training school going for your friend so that—”

“How did you know about that? Let me guess. The other Mr. Special Ops, Jordan Lohan, got that intel from the two officers from Fort Bragg or from the politician dangling on his strings.”

His swift move took her unawares. He vaulted off the couch and leaped at her. Seizing her shoulders, he shook her so hard her head snapped back and forth.