The Real Father (Twins) (Harlequin Superromance No. 927) (10 page)

 

A
N HOUR LATER
, the first, second and third place winners chosen, ribbons proudly affixed to the dis
plays, Molly headed out to the parking lot. Though it was barely noon, she felt strangely tired. Try as she might, she couldn't stop thinking about the librarian's parting words.
A lot of people are going to be disappointed.

The woman's suggestion was unmistakable. Molly ought to consider staying, for Liza's sake. Ellen Fowler had wanted Molly to know that the community would support her, that the goodwill people had felt toward her mother would extend to Molly.
We could definitely use a good landscape architect around here.

How ridiculous to find the suggestion tempting. And yet Molly had to admit that in spite of everything, in spite of the ten years she'd spent building a life in Atlanta, Demery still felt like home. She loved the narrow, oak-canopied roads, the antebellum homes, the quaint main street. She loved the way spring smelled sweet here, without a million cars to fill the air with fumes.

And she loved the tight-knit fabric of the small community. Look how quickly she was being reabsorbed. Only three weeks back and already she was landscaping the new park, judging the science fair. Liza had made a dozen buddies, earned an invitation to join the Girl Scout troop. Just yesterday Molly had run into an old high school friend at the local nursery, and they had planned a catch-up dinner for this Friday night.

But, temping as the homespun package was, Molly had to resist. Demery might have all the charm of a small Southern town, but it had all the
dangers, too. Demery society had a long memory, and an intense curiosity about the smallest of its members that simply didn't recognize the notion of privacy. How long before someone began adding up dates, unearthing decade-old gossip? How long before everyone was speculating, investigating, and finally exposing the secret of Liza's birth?

No, she couldn't stay. No matter how much Liza might want to. They would leave in April. That had been her plan, and she would stick to it. She could stay for the azaleas, for the spring tour of homes, for the dedication of Beau's park. But no longer. She would be back in Atlanta before the acres of Everspring daylilies began to bloom in May.

Fortified by this resolution, she walked briskly toward her parking space. She almost didn't see the woman sitting in the beat-up green sedan two cars down from hers. She wouldn't have noticed her at all, except that the sedan's windows were open, and a low rumble of rock music drew Molly's attention.

It was Annie. She undoubtedly hadn't seen Molly go by—she was slumped over the steering wheel, her face completely hidden by her unbound hair. Molly might have been worried, except that Annie was clearly conscious. Her fingers were resting on the wheel, too, and beating a rough counterpoint to the edgy music.

Still, Molly wanted to be sure. She moved to the passenger-side window and bent down. “Annie,” she said softly. “Are you all right?”

Annie looked up, and to Molly's surprise she looked as if she might have been crying. Her eyes
were red-rimmed and swollen, but when she spoke her voice was as tough and saucy as ever.

“Oh, yeah, I'm just great. Just peachy keen. Thanks for asking.”

Molly refused to let the sarcasm get to her. “What are you doing out here? Did you come to take Tommy to lunch?”

Annie snorted. “Yeah, right. Like I've got time for that.” She ran her fingers through her hair roughly. “Actually I'm sitting here trying to talk myself out of walking into that classroom, yanking the little darling out by his hair and tossing him straight into military school.”

Molly hesitated only a second, then opened the door and slid onto the passenger's seat. She settled herself comfortably, ignoring Annie's surprised irritation. “Is this about the fight the other day? I've been meaning to talk to you about that. Liza said it wasn't Tommy's fault at all.”

“The Junior Caldwell thing?” Annie waved her hand dismissively. “Good grief. That's yesterday's crisis.
Today's
problem is the science fair. Tommy told me he'd been doing his project at school, but his teacher called this morning and said he didn't turn one in at all.”

“Oh.” Molly thought of the rows upon rows of clever experiments she had just judged, all the statistics neatly graphed, all the reports carefully typed. She hadn't seen one by Tommy, but she had merely assumed he had entered another category. “Oh, dear. I'm sorry.”

“Yeah. Well.” Annie stared at the steering wheel
again, for once disarmingly out of bluster. She sighed. “You want to know the most pathetic part? I'm actually dreading going in there one more time, listening to them patronize me, telling me how smart he is, how he just needs more discipline and structure. Like I don't know what they're really saying. Like I don't know they think it's all my fault.”

Molly almost jumped in with a denial, but in her heart she knew some truth lay behind Annie's statements. It was tough being a single mother.

“Sometimes I think he'd be better off in the public school,” Annie said after a moment of silence. “At least there they wouldn't look at you as if you had two heads just because you don't live at Mr. and Mrs. Perfect's house.”

“That's not such a crazy idea. Liza goes to the public school in Atlanta. It's an excellent school.” Molly watched as an orderly line of uniformed children filed across the playground in front of them, heading for recess. Radway did have an elitist atmosphere. You could probably count on one hand the number of children who came from single-parent families. And Annie's little sedan was the only economy car in the entire parking lot. “Have you ever really considered taking him out?”

“Yeah, but—” Annie took a deep breath and tossed Molly a sheepish grin “—I guess I'm just too stubborn to let the snobs drive me away. Kind of dumb, huh?”

Molly just shrugged. What could she say? She had already asked herself several times why she was
here. Why had she enrolled Liza at Radway for the short time they'd be in Demery?

It wasn't exactly her alma mater. Though Forrests had been Radway alums for generations, Molly herself had never attended the exclusive private school. Neither had Annie. Public school education had been all their families could dream of affording.

In fact, if Molly's fee from Everspring hadn't been so generous, she wouldn't have been able to manage Radway prices even now. Heaven only knew how Annie was managing to swing it on her salary at the hardware store.

Well…heaven and perhaps Jackson Forrest.

In her heart Molly knew her decision to send Liza there, even for this one semester, had something to do with proving herself as good as the Forrests. As reasons went, that one was embarrassingly shallow, maybe even dangerously vain. At least as dumb as Annie's reason. But true.

And that was why she could never move back to Demery for good. There was too much to prove. And far, far too much to forget.

But while Molly sank deeper into uncomfortable introspection, Annie seemed to be recovering her natural spirits.

“Yeah, I'm pretty stubborn, that's for sure,” she said comfortably. “Still, you and I went to the public school, and it didn't kill either one of us.” She looked over at Molly and chuckled mischievously.

“Of course, we did end up fallen women, didn't we? Not a Mr. Perfect in sight at your house or mine. So…”

Molly opened her mouth, ready to trot out her prefab story of the loving, utterly fictitious dead husband. But then she met Annie's frank, open gaze, and somehow she suddenly just couldn't do it.

Lying was pointless. Annie knew. That look said it all. Annie knew.

So instead Molly just gave her a small, sad smile. “I don't think we can blame that on the public school system, Annie.”

Shaking her head slowly, Annie leaned back, reaching forward with one hand to turn up the stereo, which was knocking out an old Melissa Etheridge tune.

“Nope,” she said over the throbbing electric guitar. “I think we have to blame that one on green eyes, blue moons—and the amazing stupidity of teenage girls.”

D
INNER WAS LATE
that night, but no one in the indolent, congenial group of family and friends gathered on the Everspring verandah really cared.

It was a beautiful evening, seeming to promise that a spectacular spring was only a breath away. The sky was layered in lavender and peach. The sunset tinted the white plantation walls in Easter egg colors. The breeze was gentle, the temperature mild enough to coax off sweaters.

The porch was crowded. Two of Lavinia's white-haired, happily foul-mouthed buddies sat at a wicker table in the corner, playing canasta, the card game Lavinia had lately introduced them to. They had tried to persuade Jackson to join them, but he was half-asleep on the bench swing—or pretending to be—and couldn't be nudged into activity of any kind.

Liza was apparently engaged in some important Planet Cuspian business, training an eager but bewildered Stewball in the subtle art of Mudbluff hunting. The pair skulked by every now and then, and occasionally Stewball let loose a muffled bark, but for the most part it was all very cloak-and-dagger.

Molly and Lavinia stood at the top of the steps,
discussing Lavinia's newest brainstorm for the ever-evolving garden. Just this morning she had decided to change the roof of the huge white wooden gazebo that was under construction.

They had already agreed that the gazebo would be erected in the empty spot left by the lost oak. But they had spent the past half an hour locked in happy, heated battle about the exact design of the structure.

“The roof must be pierced,” Lavinia insisted. “Open fretwork, lattice, I don't care. As long as you can look up and see the stars.”

“But don't you see,” Molly argued, “that if the roof is open it provides no protection from the rain? Plus, an open roof will lack mass. It will have less definition when viewed from the house.”

“I don't care,” the older woman said. “I want it open.”

“Be realistic, Lavinia.” Molly tilted her head, smiling. “You'd have to be lying flat on your back on one of the seats in order to see the stars from the gazebo you've described.”

“So? What's your point?” Lavinia looked disgusted. “Good grief, girl. For a healthy young American gal you have darn little sense of romance!”

Molly felt herself flushing faintly as the two card-players, Grace Pickens and Evelyn Carole, began to laugh. Both women were well into their sixties, elegant and well-groomed, but enormously fond of mint juleps, which over the past hour had made their conversation grow alarmingly risque.

“Lavinia Forrest,” Grace called out without even
fully lifting her lips from her drink, “if you're deluding yourself that anybody on this earth is going to take your creaky bag of bones down to that gazebo and—”

“I didn't say it was going to be
me,
you evil-minded old woman,” Lavinia retorted. She lifted her chin regally. “But Everspring Plantation has stood for two hundred years, and it's probably going to stand for another two hundred. Don't you think it's possible that somewhere along the way it might host another romance or two?”

With a small huff she turned to Molly, presenting her back to the offending Grace. “That tree saw quite a bit in its day,” Lavinia continued, as if she hadn't ever been interrupted. “And so did I. You may not have realized this, but I have a fairly good view of that old oak from my bedroom window.”

Molly hesitated. What was Lavinia trying to tell her?

“No,” she said carefully. “I didn't realize that—”

Lavinia laughed slyly. “Well, I couldn't see details,” she explained, “but I knew when the tree had visitors, and I usually had a pretty good idea who those visitors were. So unless I miss my guess, you looked at the stars through those branches once or twice yourself, Miss Molly.”

“Ooh,” Grace called out, grinning.
“Busted!”
She slammed her cards down onto the table triumphantly. “Canasta!”

“Damnation!” Evelyn glowered at her partner.
“Blast you, Grace. I think Lavinia taught you how to cheat.”

“No one needs to teach Grace Pickens how to cheat,” she said indignantly. “But you hush up, Evelyn. The conversation was just getting good. Who took you out to the oak tree and made you see stars, Molly, dear? Was it Beaumont? Or Jackson? Or both?” She made a particularly salacious sound with her tongue against her teeth. “Now that would be a good story. Ha!
Both!
”

Molly instinctively turned toward Liza, wondering what her daughter would make of such comments. But the little girl was on the far side of the verandah, struggling with Stewball, who apparently had lost interest in hunting Mudbluffs. She obviously hadn't heard a thing.

“Well, I—”

But before Molly could articulate an answer, Jackson stirred on the swing. He cast a lazy glance at the older women through half-closed lids.

“Me?” He sounded hugely amused. “Ridiculous. What on earth would make a virtuous girl like Molly give the time of day to a bad boy like me?”

“Oh, brother.” Grace rolled her eyes dramatically as she stacked the cards into a neat pile. “I won't even dignify that dumb question with an answer.”

Molly smiled gratefully at Jackson. It had been sweet of him to try to deflect the old gossip's attention.

“Maybe a better question,” Molly offered, “would be why a highflier like Jackson would ever
have wasted his time with a stick-in-the-mud like me.”

“Nope.” Grace shuffled the deck of cards crisply. “That's a stupid question, too.” Sighing hopelessly, she began to deal a new hand like a pro. “God, Lavinia, why are young people so dense these days?”

“It's called modesty,” Lavinia said laconically. “It was around in our day, too, Grace, though you may have missed it.”

“Modesty is a bore,” Grace pronounced, shaking her empty glass, obviously annoyed at being out of liquor. “And stereotypes are a bore, too. Jackson wasn't such a terrible devil, if you ask me. And Beaumont wasn't always such a saint.” She nodded dramatically in slow motion, her head weaving slightly. “No, he sure wasn't, though I know it's the official Demery position to say he was, thanks to you, Lavinia, and your Saint Beaumont Memorial Pavilion.”

Unaware of the stunned silence she was leaving in her wake, Grace cleared her throat loudly, picked up her new hand and began scowling at the cards.

“Wasn't he responsible for that fuss over at the country club, the one where all the money went missing? Never did fess up, as I recall. The Lorring fellow lost his job instead.”

“Grace—” Lavinia began.

But Grace didn't seem to be listening anymore. She hiccuped slightly. “No sir, no saint,” she told her cards confidentially. “Damned fine-looking hunk of manhood, of course. But no saint.”

Molly felt frozen in place. She had never heard anyone,
anyone,
speak this way about Beau before. It acted on her like a static shock, making the small hairs at the nape of her neck quiver.

“Grace, dear,” Lavinia said slowly and dangerously. ‘I'm afraid you've had three or four hundred too many mint juleps.”

Grace finally looked up from her cards. “What? Oh. Do I have things mixed-up? Was that you, Jackson, dear? You stole the money? Oh, well. I never was very good at keeping you boys straight.”

“What it is,” Lavinia answered in a quelling tone, “is ancient history. Quite boring, actually. I'm getting hungry, how about you? I wonder if dinner is—”

“Miss Pickens,” Molly interrupted before Lavinia could change the subject. As ashamed as she was of this episode of her father's history, as shocked as she was to discover that it had been common knowledge among the Everspring set, she couldn't allow Beau's memory to be blackened. She couldn't allow him—or Jackson—to take the blame for something her father had done.

“Miss Pickens, it couldn't be Jackson you're thinking about. Jackson never went to the country club. He hated golf. But I am afraid you have your facts confused. It's true, my father lost his job because money was missing from the pro shop. He always contended he didn't take it, though he couldn't ever prove it. But the whole thing had absolutely nothing to do with Beau.”

Grace put down her cards and tilted her mint julep
back, obviously stalling, since the glass was quite empty. At long last she looked chagrined.

“Lavinia?” Her voice was unsteady. “I'm sorry. I—I don't know what to say—”

“Then by all means, Grace, dear,
say nothing.
” Lavinia's eyes and tone were frosty. “It's an excellent strategy that you should perhaps employ more often.”

 

J
ACKSON KNEW
Molly had heard him come up behind her. He'd deliberately made plenty of noise as he descended the verandah steps, hoping to give her time to collect herself. But she didn't turn around. She just kept staring down the terraced lawn, down past the landscaping lights, down into the darkness.

“I've been sent to bring you in,” he said with a studied levity. “There's good news. Lavinia and Liza have finally managed to console Consuelo, whose sweet potato casserole sank or burned or grew lumps, or some such tragedy. She has found the courage to go on, and apparently there will be a dinner tonight after all.”

Still Molly didn't turn around. He saw a tremor pass through her shoulders, and he wondered if she had been crying.
Hell.
He put his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out and gathering her into his arms. They could be seen from the dining room, and he'd be damned if he'd give Grace Pickens anything else to gossip about.

“Don't let the old witch get to you, M.” He tried to communicate comfort through his tone instead.
“She's fifty percent sloshed, seventy-five percent senile and a hundred percent shameless.”

“Maybe,” Molly answered without turning. Her voice was throaty and strangely rough. Her shoulders rose as she took a deep breath. “But is she
wrong?
”

He shouldn't have needed to hesitate, to buy time before he answered. He had known she'd ask this question. He had seen the way she had looked at Grace Pickens, full of disbelief, rejection and a slowly dawning dread. But he did need time. Though he'd been debating with himself for the past twenty minutes, he still hadn't decided how much to tell her.

Hesitation would eventually become an answer of its own, though, so he forced himself to speak.

“Grace Pickens is the lewdest old busybody south of the North Pole, Molly—you know that. She scoops up every morsel of gossip she finds lying in the gutter. And if that's not repulsive enough to please her, she makes up some more.”

Finally Molly turned around. She tried to smile, but, as he had feared, her eyes were bright, shining wetly in the rising moonlight.

“You still haven't answered my question, Jackson. What she said just now about Beau, about my father. Was any of that true?”

He mentally consigned Grace Pickens to hell. “Who knows, Molly? It was what…twelve years ago? I remember Lavinia being suspicious at the time—something about finding cash Beau couldn't explain. But Beau never admitted anything.”

“Not even to you?”

“Not even to me. I never even heard about it until months later. I was up at school most of that summer, remember?” But she wouldn't remember, of course. It hadn't ever mattered much to Molly where
he
was, as long as Beau was close enough to touch. “By the time I got home, it had all died down. Your father had a new job—”

“Which Beau found for him,” Molly interjected. “Did you know that? Beau helped him get another job.”

“Yes,” Jackson said slowly. “I knew. As the manager of Touchdown Sports.”

Molly's expression was thoughtful. “My father loved that job, and he always said he wouldn't have been hired if he hadn't had a recommendation from the local football hero. I had almost forgotten that. My mother was so relieved.” She smiled hesitantly. “So Lavinia's suspicions can't really have been true, can they? Beau wouldn't have bothered to help my father find work if he had been responsible for getting him fired in the first place.”

Unbelievable.
In the face of such resolute naivete, such blind determination to preserve the fantasy, Jackson couldn't quite govern his expression.

Beau,
he thought,
you slick, incredibly lucky son of a bitch. What did you ever do to deserve this kind of loyalty?
Nothing. His brother had done nothing, and yet this incredible victory had been his, remained his still, ten years after his death.

Molly touched his arm. “What is it?” She looked
at him closely. “You look upset. Was it something I said?”

“Of course not.” But Jackson was no saint, either. He was so tempted. Tempted to blast that innocent relief off her face with a few carefully aimed truths. Tempted to knock down all the temples she'd erected in Beau's memory, merely in order to clear the path for himself. He didn't mind waiting for them to crumble under their own weight—if the damn things ever
would.
But Molly wasn't going to allow that, was she? Waiting was a fool's strategy this time. And he hadn't ever been very good at it anyhow.

She moved closer. “What is it, Jackson?”

“I'm just surprised, that's all.” He tried to keep his voice neutral. “It sounds as if you would
prefer
to believe that your father stole the money. Looks like you'd rather keep your illusions about Beau intact at any price—even at the price of any illusions you have left about your father. I guess I don't understand that.”

She looked at him a long moment. “I guess I don't, either. Not really,” she said softly.

He waited. After a few seconds she sighed, crossing her arms as she turned back toward the dark, empty vistas she'd been watching when he arrived. When she shifted, the sweet warmth of her perfume carried toward him like the scent of spring flowers, though no flowers had bloomed yet. Winter might technically be in decline, but it still ruled at Everspring.