The Real Father (Twins) (Harlequin Superromance No. 927) (14 page)

Somehow, in those crazy seconds, Jackson had managed to button up Molly's shirt. He moved away smoothly and greeted the newcomer.

“Hi,” he was saying with complete aplomb, apparently unfazed by the fact that his shirt was plastered to his chest and his hair shone wetly in the sunlight. “I'm sorry. I'm Jackson Forrest. Brad or
dered some plants for us, and we've come to collect them.”

The small, tidy woman still looked distressed. “I wouldn't ever have turned on the irrigation system if I'd known you were out here. I'm so sorry.”

Jackson reassured her, and finally Molly gathered her wits enough to turn around and give the woman a smile, too. “Hi,” she said politely. “Don't worry. We're fine.”

“Oh, my dear, you're soaked!” The woman reached behind the main counter and pulled out a soft cotton rag. “Here, this may help dry you off a little.”

While Molly dabbed at her face with the rag, and the woman kept repeating her abject apologies, Jackson calmly explained that their trucks would be arriving soon for the plants. He gave her the key, and finally his gentle assurances seemed to soothe her embarrassed misery.

She turned to Molly, who hoped she was looking a little more presentable now, thanks to the miraculously absorbent rag. “Let me make it up to you, dear,” the little lady said somberly. “I know! Won't you take a flower home? We've a great many lovely things here, as you can see.”

“Yes,” Molly said, “you have a magnificent selection, but really there's no need—”

“Please,” the woman urged. “It would make me feel much better. And Brad would want you to go away happy.”

Molly flushed, and somehow managed not to look at Jackson. “All right. Thank you,” she said, glanc
ing around. “Actually, it would be nice to have some memento of your beautiful nursery, and the lovely time we spent here.”

But what? Out of these thousands of exquisite flowers, which one would best symbolize the burgeoning excitement, the sensual awakening, the pure misty romance of it all?

Of course. An orchid. One small display of pink and purple orchids stood on the corner of the table nearest to Molly. She moved toward it as if led by a thread.

“How about this one?” She touched a small cattlyea, not the most expensive by far, but the one that seemed to call to her. So strangely delicate it didn't seem real. So fragrant, so blatantly sensual that it made her tingle all over again. “I've always loved orchids. Somehow they've always symbolized romance to me.”

She looked up. The woman was smiling, delighted with the choice. But Jackson's face was blank. Completely, alarmingly empty.

Molly felt the blood rush out of her. She had done something wrong. Something terribly wrong. She looked at the orchid, then back at Jackson. What was it? Had he not wanted her to accept a gift?

“You know,” he said with an equal emptiness in his voice. “We've taken somewhat longer here than I had expected, and I'm in danger of missing my flight. Would you mind driving the car home by yourself, Molly? I think I'd better just take a cab straight to the airport.”

“Oh, dear, I'll call one right away,” the woman
said, still eager to atone for her earlier mistake. She picked up the telephone and began to punch buttons.

“Thank you.” Jackson turned back to Molly. “You're all right, then? You can find your way home?”

“Of course,” she answered numbly. “But I had hoped—”

“After all, it's not as if you'll really be alone,” he observed pleasantly. “You'll have your orchid. And, as always, you'll have your memories of Beau.”

“L
EAVE IT ALONE
, L
AVINIA
.”
Jackson was too damn tired to have this argument now. His charter from New York had touched down less than an hour ago, and he was halfway up the stairs, still lugging his garment bag over his shoulder. It was nearly one in the morning, and he just wanted to go to bed. “You don't understand.”

“Well, of course I don't understand,” Lavinia retorted somewhat acerbically. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, her hand on the newel post as she looked up at him. “That's because you refuse to explain it to me.”

Only ten more stairs. If he had just climbed a little faster, he could have reached the peace and quiet of his bedroom before she waylaid him. But he'd been movingly slowly, physically exhausted from the nonstop meetings of the past two days. And mentally exhausted, too, from wrestling with himself about Molly.

Wrestling with himself—and losing.

Much as he wanted to think he and Molly could someday make it work, he'd finally accepted that it was impossible. Yes, there was a physical attraction, but that wasn't enough. The lines between the past
and the present, between truth and lie, between memory and reality, were all too hopelessly tangled.

In the end, it didn't even matter how much he cared about her. He was the one man she could never really love—because he was the one man who couldn't ever really exist for her. He would always live in her mind merely in some distorted relation to Beau.

His kisses would either be comfortingly like Beau's, or they would be strangely different from Beau's. His voice, his laugh, his touch—the true north on her compass would always be Beau, and Jackson would be only some deviation, for the better or the worse, from that point.

But it wasn't until she picked up that orchid, cradled it reverently in her hand, that he had realized how hopeless the situation really was. How entwined the two brothers would always be in her psyche.

Just moments before, Jackson had held her. He had put his hands on her skin, as he had dreamed of doing a thousand restless nights. Hell, he had come within a sinful inch of making love to her among the drenched flowers.

And, then, when invited to choose a memento of that occasion, she had picked the orchid, the symbol of Beau's love. The flower Beau had pinned to her heart a dozen times, including the last night of his life.

“Well?” Lavinia sounded irritated, and he realized he must have been losing track of the conversation. “Explain it to me.”

“Vinnie,” he said as calmly as he could. “I have explained it. You've just refused to listen.”

“I'm old.” She stood there, implacable and unmoving. “I'm senile. Tell me again.”

He shifted the garment bag to a more comfortable spot on his shoulder. Who would have thought that one suit, three shirts and a razor could weigh so much? Who would have thought one little trip to check out a building site could leave him so depleted?

“I don't suppose you'd consider postponing this nag-a-thon until the morning?”

“No,” she stated flatly. “I wouldn't.”

“All right. One more time.” He draped the garment bag over the stair rail. “Though I'm delighted that you've decided to donate land to the city for a community park, I have never liked the idea of naming it after Beau. And because I don't think it's a good idea, I refuse to participate in it.”

Lavinia waved that away with one flash of her hand. “Your education cost your mother a fortune. Looks to me as if she could just as well have thrown that money into the compost heap. Don't they teach any logic classes at Yale? ‘I don't want to because I don't want to' is just about the simplest example of circular logic I've ever heard.”

“You don't want me to be more specific,” he said through a clenched jaw. “I'm too damn tired to be diplomatic.”

“Good,” she said, settling herself on the bottom step. “Maybe for once I'll hear the truth, then. For
get diplomacy. Tell me why don't you think we should name the park in Beau's memory.”

“Damn it, Vinnie.” Why couldn't all this remain unspoken? He didn't want to articulate this. He didn't even want to think about it. “Grace Pickens said it about as well as it can be said, don't you think? You're erecting the Saint Beaumont memorial pavilion. You say I knew him better than anyone else in the world. Well, you're right—I did. And one thing I know, goddamn it, is that he was no saint.”

“Of course he wasn't, dear.” Lavinia didn't look disturbed by his profanity—or by his pronouncement. “But no one is, at least no one I know. Luckily, you don't have to be a saint to be loved. You don't have to be a saint to be missed. You don't even have to be a saint to be honored in such a way.”

She met his gaze squarely. “If we had lost you that day, Jackson, instead of Beau, we would be building the pavilion just the same.”

He sighed, exasperated. “Is that what you think this is about, Vinnie? You think I'm just jealous of Beau?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Is it? Are you?”

“No. Damn it, no.” He came down the steps slowly and sat wearily on the tread just above her.

“Look, I'll admit it was difficult at first, knowing that everyone was saying that, in a just world, the good brother would have lived, while the bad brother—”

Lavinia looked at him unflinchingly. “Not everyone,” she corrected matter-of-factly.

“Hell, I even felt that way myself,” he said, ignoring her. “I lay there in that godforsaken hospital bed for two solid months, wishing I could trade places with him. But at the end of the two months, I was still alive. And Beau was still dead. So I learned to deal with it.”

“All right.” Lavinia folded her hands in her lap patiently. “And? I'm not sure your logic is getting any clearer, dear. You learned to deal with it…and?”

Her tone broke through the last of his reserve. Maybe she was right. Maybe he wasn't making sense. But it was complicated—layered with secrets he couldn't tell, secrets that weren't his to tell. But the secrets couldn't stay hidden forever. Already they were taking shape, a visible, undeniable human form that no one could ignore forever.

Demery loved a scandal, and setting Beau up as the town hero would guarantee that any scandal about
him
—or about his surviving twin brother—would be the biggest, juiciest story of all. A great many innocent people would suffer.

“Jackson? Help me out here. You learned to deal with it…and?”

Why couldn't she just let him be? He was tired, and he was angry and he was sick of the whole subject.

“And I guess I just think the rest of the world should learn to deal with it, too.” He stood. “Get someone else to deliver your speech, Vinnie. Someone who still thinks Beau was perfect. Why don't you do it? Or get Molly—she's still completely be
witched.” He rose quickly up the stairs and grabbed his garment bag roughly. “But you ought to accept that Beau's gone, damn it. He's dead. Erecting a shrine to him, either in the park or in your heart, won't bring him back.”

Lavinia looked disgustingly smug, as if she'd been trying to make him say those very words all along. “Are you sure you're really talking to me, Jackson? Are you sure you're not talking to someone else?”

He shook his head, defeated. “Apparently,” he said flatly, “I'm just talking to myself.”

 

A
FTER SCHOOL
on Tuesday, Tommy and Liza spent two hours at Everspring, tracking Mudbluffs in the lower forty. Stewball helped, sometimes—when he wasn't being lazy.

Finally Tommy and Liza were tired, too. They joined Stewball on the sunny side of the riverbank and began eating the cookies Lavinia had given them.

Tommy glanced disgustedly at Stewball, who had collapsed in a heap and was snoring contentedly. “When I get a dog, I'm going to get a puppy,” Tommy announced around a mouthful of gooey carrot-cookie. “Old dogs just want to sleep all the time.”

Liza's eyes widened. “But my mom says people who live in apartments can't have pets. Is your mom really going to let you get a dog?”

“Sure she is.” Tommy made a face at his cookie
and began crumbling up the rest for the birds. He didn't meet Liza's eyes. “Someday, anyhow.”

“Oh.” Liza settled back, disappointed. She knew what
someday
meant.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Tommy had gathered a few small stones, and he was working at skipping them across the river. He was showing off, Liza knew. But he was pretty good at it.

Finally he consented to notice her again. “If you really were going to get a pet,” he asked, “what kind would it be?”

Liza closed her eyes, which made it easier to see pretend things. She loved this kind of game. “It would be a big, white, furry dog. Snow-white. So big I could ride him. But very gentle. And I would call him Franics.”

“Francis?”
Tommy twisted his face. “You'd better get a girl dog, then. Francis! Yuck.”

“I like Francis. I read it in a story.” Liza refused to speak for a few seconds, but she wasn't very good at staying mad, so in a minute she asked him, “What about you? What kind of dog would you—I mean,
are
you going to get?”

“A collie,” he said promptly. It was obvious he'd thought about this a lot. “They're very smart. But I darn sure won't call him a sissy name like Francis.”

Liza tossed a bit of her cookie at him. “No, you'll probably call him something stupid and mean, like Killer. Or Fang.”

“Probably.” Tommy lay back, closing his eyes against the sun. “And I'll train him to keep all girls away.”

Liza made a small harrumphing sound. “That won't be very hard. Girls hate mean dogs named Fang and they hate dumb, stuck-up boys named Tommy, too.”

Without opening his eyes, Tommy chuckled. “Whatever. Now what about a house? If you could live anywhere you wanted, what house would you buy?”

She was glad he wasn't watching, because she couldn't keep her gaze from drifting back toward Everspring. The plantation was the most beautiful home she had ever seen, and she loved it here, loved it fiercely. It was the only place on earth that made her feel as happy as the Planet Cuspian did.

But she knew Tommy would make terrible fun of her if he knew she dreamed of staying here. So she crossed her fingers and lied.

“Maybe a little house like the one my mother grew up in. And I'd plant Ballerina roses everywhere. That's what Aunt Lavinia has on the side patio. Don't they have the most beautiful name?” She repeated it with feeling. “Ballerina roses.”

“Not me! I'd have a big four-story house,” Tommy said. “Like Junior Caldwell's, only bigger. And I'd have one whole giant room just for video games and TVs and stuff.”

“Cool,” Liza agreed, though she mentally added Ballerina roses to that picture. She lay back, then, too, and stared into the afternoon sky, which was loaded down with clouds. From this angle, it was easy to imagine herself flying up there, in the clouds.

“And what if you just absolutely
had
to have a
father?” Tommy was chewing on a straw of grass, and his voice was all fakey board, like he didn't care about the question at all. “Who would you want?”

She closed her eyes and pictured King Willowsong. “I would want my real father, of course.”

Tommy shifted on the grass, as if he were annoyed that she didn't know how to play the game. “Well, if he's actually dead, you can't have him. So say someone else.”

“I don't know,” she said nervously. He might not like her answer. He might think she was trespassing on his territory. “I'm not sure. Maybe Jackson.” She rolled over on her side and looked at Tommy, hoping he wasn't mad. “How about you? Who would you want?”

“You mean if I
had
to have a father?” He didn't look mad, but he gave her a tense look, as if daring her to misunderstand this conversation. “Because dads are a pain in the butt. I'd a whole lot rather not have anyone bossing me around at all.”

She nodded. “Right. I mean if you had to.” She threaded her fingers together. “Would it be Coach Riser?”

“I don't know.” He tossed his blade of grass aside. “He might be all right. Or I guess I could stand Jackson.”

She felt a ridiculous panic, as if this silly game were going to decide something important. “But that's not really fair,” she said carefully. “I mean, you could have either one of them. They both like you a lot. But Coach Riser would never take me, because I'm a girl, and I can't play soccer or football
with him. Jackson is the only one who might ever want to be my dad.”

Tommy raised himself up on one elbow. “Do you really think Coach Riser likes me that much?”

She nodded. “I know he does.”

Tommy smiled, and it looked like a really happy smile. But then he caught himself and went back to being cool. “Oh, you just want me to take Coach Riser so you can have Jackson.”

She shrugged, hoping she didn't look too pitiful. “It's just—that's really the only way it would work, don't you think?”

He watched her for a long time. About a million thoughts seemed to be going through his mind.

“Okay, then,” he said at length. “I guess you can have Jackson.”

She looked down at her hands. “Thanks,” she said. “I mean—I know we're just goofing, but…”

“Hey,” he interrupted, jumping to his feet. “I've got an idea! Let's go to the crook in the river. I know a place that we can pretend is King Willowsong's ice cave.”

She looked up, grateful that he had changed the subject. Talking like that had been kind of confusing, and strangely sad.

“Okay,” she said, climbing up. “That sounds great.”

Rousing Stewball, Tommy darted off immediately, going much faster than she could hope to follow. After a minute, he came back and walked more slowly.