The Real Father (Twins) (Harlequin Superromance No. 927) (17 page)

After that, Liza couldn't do a single one of her long division problems. The numbers just kept jumping around. Her heart was beating so fast she wondered if her mom and Lavinia could tell.

Finally Molly found her shoes, and, slipping them on, she frowned at herself in the mirror. She touched her hair nervously, and then she slid her hands down the front of her dress, as if she were afraid it didn't look right. But it did. It looked wonderful. Liza was so proud. She just knew that Jackson would fall in love with her tonight. Anybody would.

“Stop fussing, Molly. You look fine,” Lavinia said. “The poor man doesn't stand a chance.” She took a can of rainbow-colored sprinkles out of her paper bag and set it on the counter. “So. Do you have everything you need?”

Molly nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

Lavinia unearthed a roll of Saran Wrap. “Everything?” she repeated with a heavy emphasis on the word.

Molly made a small growling sound. “Yes, Lavinia,” she said tightly. “I have
everything
I need.”

Lavinia smiled. “Good. Because when I left him, the poor boy was down at the gazebo, and he was looking mighty down in the dumps, so I doubt he's made any preparations at all for your arrival. In fact, I think he's going to be extremely surprised to see you.”

Molly bit her lower lip, hesitating. Liza watched
curiously—she had never seen her mother look so uncertain.

“Happily surprised, do you think?” Molly fingered the large mother-of-pearl button at her throat nervously. She caught her lower lip between her teeth again, and Liza was afraid she might bite off all her pretty lipstick before Jackson ever saw it.

Lavinia must have been thinking the same thing, because she suddenly made an impatient tsking sound.

“For heaven's sake, Molly my dear, how would I know?” She tossed a subtle wink toward Liza, who bent back over her homework quickly. “Why don't you just stop stalling and go find out for yourself?”

 

H
E WAS STANDING
at the open gazebo door, casually dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, staring out toward the starlit darkness. His golden hair fell softly onto his forehead, teased by the cool spring breeze. As her shadow fell across the doorway, he looked over at her.

He didn't show even the smallest sign of welcome.

“Hi,” she said diffidently, gripping the freshly painted gazebo frame with one hand. “Lavinia told me you were here so I thought maybe…”

“I'm here,” he said. His face was studiously blank. “What do you want?”

She hesitated. “May I come in?”

He was going to say no—she could feel it. She could even see it in the sudden tightening of his
shoulders, in the way his fingers clenched around themselves, whitening the knuckles.

“Jackson? Please?”

“What do you
want,
Molly?” He moved to one side harshly, leaving just enough room for her to enter without brushing against him. “What more do you want from me?”

“I want to apologize,” she said, still hovering at the doorway, as if it were some magic line, as if she needed his spoken permission to cross. She summoned her well-rehearsed speech. “I want to tell you how sorry I am. Annie has told me everything, about Beau and how he—”

“Apology accepted,” Jackson ground out tightly.

“Is there anything else?”

In the face of his curt impatience, she faltered, but she went on. The speech was already written. “I know there's no excuse for the unfair assumptions I made. To accuse you of—” She shook her head. “It was insane. You are one of the most noble, generous men I've ever—”

“Noble?”
He uttered a low syllable of profound disgust. “For God's sake, Molly, you'd better go home. You're delusional. You're just trading one preposterous fantasy for another.”

“No,” she said. “I'm not. I am finally facing the truth. Beau was never what I believed he was, while
you
—”

“Forget
me.
” He slashed at the air disparagingly with one hand, cutting off the thought. “I haven't got the slightest interest in stepping up to take
Beau's place now that he has toppled off your pedestal.”

She flinched slightly from the force of his sudden attack. “That's not what I'm saying—”

“Sure it is. You're still looking for a hero, aren't you? Well, look somewhere else. He may not have been Saint Beau, but I'm damn sure not Saint Jackson.” He laughed harshly. “Hell, I'm not even King Willowsong. Fathering Tommy may not be on my list of sins, but I do have a list. And it's just as long. It's just as black.”

She didn't know what to say. Of course he had sins. Who didn't? Her own list was long enough to cause many a sleepless night. But how could she prove to him that she wasn't looking for perfection? She had ceased to believe in that weeks ago, as she slowly faced little truths about Beau. This new, larger betrayal was just the final awakening.

She watched him for a moment. She studied the long, tapered grace of his strong back. And his hair, which seemed almost white gold tonight, as if it had caught the starlight in its strands. His face was harshly beautiful, his jaw etched in silver, his angles well defined by moonshadows.

“Do you know how I felt,” she asked him suddenly, “when I found out that Beau had been cheating on me? When I found out that he had even created a child with someone else?”

“Yes. I know,” Jackson said. “And I'm sorry for it.” He lifted his head wearily. “But I can't glue your heart back together anymore, Molly. Beau was
what he was—I can't change that. Frankly, I'm tired of trying.”

“But you obviously
don't
know. Because what I felt was
relieved.
” Her voice gathered strength. “That's all, Jackson.
Relieved.
”

He looked at her, darkly contemplative, as if he were trying to read the nuances of her face through the liquid moonlight.

“Am I supposed to believe that?”

Finally releasing the door, she took one tentative step into the gazebo. The paint still smelled sharp and new. Freshly cut wood gave off its cedar scent.

“Yes,” she said flatly. “Because it's true. I was relieved because if Beau was Tommy's father, that meant that you were
not.
It meant that Annie had no claims on you.”

She moved closer.

“It meant,” she said, stopping just behind his shoulder, “that she couldn't take you away from me.”

“Molly—” He started to shift, as if to escape the nearness of her, or perhaps to flee the implications of her words. But though the gazebo was of typical, generous Everspring proportions, it still wasn't large enough.

He closed his eyes briefly. “I think you should go away. You're emotional right now. You're vulnerable, and you're looking for something to hang on to….”

Frustration tightened inside her. What more could she say to convince him? She looked at his remote profile. They stood skin to skin, and yet there was
a cavern gaping between them. How was she ever going to bridge it?

She took a deep breath. Perhaps, she thought, there was no bridge. Maybe there was only courage, and the one great leap of faith.

“I can't go away. I can't go because I want you.” She touched his arm. “It has nothing to do with Beau or Tommy—or anything except that I want to make love to you. I want it so much I'm nearly sick with it.”

His gaze met hers again, and for the first time his green eyes seemed truly alive. They glittered in the moonlight.

“I don't want to live in the past anymore,” she said. “I want the present. I want now.” She moved behind him again and leaned forward, letting her body mold itself softly, like a moth's wing, against his. “I want you.”

“No, Molly,” he said, his tension a steel thread holding his words together. “We can't. We still need to talk.”

“I'm tired of talking.” She pressed harder, breathing deeply of him, resting her cheek against the warm cotton of his sweatshirt. She put her hands on his shoulders. “We just go around in circles. And none of it matters anyway. Please, Jackson. Please. No more talking.”

“Molly, I—” His voice was hoarse. A small shudder ran from his shoulders down the long arc of his back. “Listen to me. I've never been very sensible where you were concerned. I've never been very strong. And this—”

He stopped, strangling a moan as she wrapped her hands around his waist.

“No more talking,” she repeated. She slipped her hands up under the sweatshirt, splaying her fingers against the rigid ribbons of muscle that formed the beautiful and complicated patterns of his torso.

Her face was against his shoulder, and her breath came warm and shallow against his back.

“If you don't stop now,” he said, throwing his head back and training his eyes on the stars that moved slowly across the sky, “I'm not going to be able to resist you. And then tomorrow, when you decide it was a mistake, when you decide I'm not so noble after all, then this will be just one more entry on my miserable list of sins.”

She lifted her head slowly at that.

“Do you want me?” she asked, as if that was all that mattered, as if he hadn't spoken at all.

She waited. It was such a simple question. And yet everything, from the spinning of the universe to the continued beating of her heart, seemed to hang on his answer.

He dragged in one long, jagged breath.

“Only my whole life long,” he said.

Molly felt something tight and cruel loosen its grip inside her.
Thank heaven,
she thought, exhaling the last of her fear against his skin. In spite of her mistakes, in spite of her ridiculous, childish clinging to the past, miraculously she hadn't lost her chance.

“Then turn around, Jackson, and kiss me,” she said. “We've waited for each other long enough.”

It must have been the right thing to say, because
almost immediately she felt his shuddering surrender. Resistance gave way to a flaring desperation. Murmuring her name thickly, he turned and took her into his arms. They kissed with blind abandon, with wild, whispered words, and hard, roaming hands. And somehow they found their way to the cushioned bench.

She had vowed that she would not think of the last time, that she would not think of Beau. But a small remnant of fear had haunted her. That night with Beau had been her only other act of love. And it had been here, in this same place. How could she help but compare the two?

But when Jackson had slowly unbuttoned her blue dress, he lowered his lips to her breast with a gentle fire that ignited her whole body in a blinding instant. And she knew there would be no comparisons.

The last time, she had made love in fear and defeated submission, to a young, angry man clumsy with beer and rushed with frustration. Tonight was completely different. It was everything that first night could not have been.

Jackson was the perfect lover—patient, exotic, intense, aware. He knew things about women, and about himself, that no twenty-two year old could ever understand.

His hands were gifted. His lips were wise. His body was strong as he rose over her, powerful as he moved in her, and beautiful as he answered prayers she wasn't aware of praying.

“Open your eyes,” he said as he brought her to
ward the final moment. “I want you to see me. Really
see
me.”

She obeyed, and with an almost hypnotic focus he refused to let her gaze flicker, even when the hot waves of climax began to wash over her.

“Jackson,” she murmured weakly. Reality began to slip.

“Molly, look at me.” And somehow, because he willed it, she did. He owned her consciousness, kept her focused on his fiercely tender face. He never allowed his rhythm to falter, even when she couldn't do anything to help, when she couldn't do anything but accept the driving pleasure he brought her.

She called out, half-frightened by her own helplessness, but his eyes, his beautiful green eyes, were always there.

And then, when she thought she could bear no more, she heard his voice.

“I love you,” he said, as if in pain, and then he, too, was lost to anything but pleasure.

For a long time after, she lay in his arms, drenched, exhausted and more at peace than she remembered being ever before in her life. She gazed up at the silver stars sewn like sequins on the black velvet sky and thought how wise Lavinia had been, insisting that the gazebo's roof be left open. It would have been a shame to miss such beauty.

But eventually Molly's eyes drifted shut, and she drowsed, maybe for an hour, maybe for just a few floating minutes. When she awoke, he was watching her with something that looked both infinitely tender and strangely sad.

She touched his cheek, wondering how sadness could possibly have entered this blissful place. “I never dreamed,” she said sleepily, “that anything could be like this.”

He tilted his head, and he looked down at her with such a somber intensity she felt suddenly awake and a little bit confused.

“I did,” he said. “I've dreamed it a million times. You have always been my dream.”

She felt a small hitch in her breathing, just a tiny, flickering awareness, like the subtle flash of lightning in the half-seen distance.

“What did you say?” She let her hand fall slowly from his cheek.

“You heard me, Molly.” His answer came with a grave and conscious dignity. “I said you have always been my dream. My first, my last, my best, my most beautiful dream.”

H
E WATCHED IT SINK IN
.

He saw the confusion, the doubt, the instinctive rejection. She shook her head, frowning, but the truth was like a storm surge, washing over her, and her struggles were no match for it.

“It was you?” Her voice was a whisper, as if she had forgotten how to form normal words. “It was always you, even then?”

She looked so lost. He hated himself, just as he had known he would. Just sixty seconds ago, she had been happy. She had been the ultimate innocent, clinging to her precious notions of his own nobility—and to her one last untainted memory of Beau. Now, like a bully, Jackson had kicked her beautiful castle of cards into a fluttering heap of rubble.

He stood, turning his gaze away from her stricken face, and began carefully rearranging his clothes into some semblance of normalcy. His conscience, he suspected, would take somewhat longer to fix.

“It can't be true.” She seemed to be talking to herself, her voice numb and toneless. “It can't be.”

He was such a coward. Even now, if he could have taken back the words, he would have.
No,
he wanted to say, cradling her in his arms,
of course it
isn't true. I could never have done such a thing. I could never have let you offer your innocence to me under false pretenses. I could never have been such a selfish, deceitful bastard.

But he couldn't say that. Because he had been.

And not just once.

Twice.

Letting her make love to him tonight without knowing the truth was just as bad as what he'd done ten years ago. Worse, because back then he had been drunk, drunk enough to think, for the first few critical moments, that she was merely a phantasm of the alcohol, a lovely hallucination come to him as the embodiment of a dream.

“But how could I have been so wrong?” Like a tired child, she had drawn her legs up under her and was sitting cross-legged on the cushioned bench. Her head was bent, and he could see that her soft blond hair was snarled slightly from their encounter and fell in a tousled veil around her face. She held her dress together with one white-knuckled fist, her fingers tangled in the soft blue fabric.

She looked up, brushing her other hand across her forehead and then into her hair, trying to tame the mess. “How could I have thought that you were—?”

“You didn't look at me very much,” he said succinctly. “You seemed…uncomfortable with the role of seductress. My memory of the early moments is a little blurred, actually, but it seems to me that you didn't let your eyes meet mine any more than you had to.”

She nodded slowly. “That's true. I was afraid. I—” She swallowed awkwardly. “Beau had been furious that night. I was terrified that he might reject me.” Her eyes took on a remote expression, as if she had entered an interior world. “But then he was so gentle. He was so good to me—”

He set his jaw as she blinked the memory away. “Not Beau,” she said, reminding herself. “You.”

“Yes.”

She nodded. And then, following an internal argument only she could hear, she began to shake her head instead. “You must have thought I was very stupid.”

“I thought you were magnificent.”

But she didn't seem to hear him. She was frowning, still shaking her head with a numbed sorrow.

“I can't imagine what you—” She closed her eyes.

“You must have thought I was…. You must have thought that Beau and I—”

“I was there, Molly. I knew you had never been with anyone before.” He tightened his throat, closing off a groan at the memory, which was suddenly so intense it had a physical quality, a touch and scent and sound. “Not even Beau.”

She looked up at him. “Did you tell Beau?” For the first time, her eyes seemed to shine with the threat of tears. “Did he die that night thinking I had betrayed him?” She inhaled brokenly, as if a new thought had slid under her ribs, like a blade. “Oh, God. Did that have anything to do with what happened? With the accident?”

Jackson knelt quickly, gathering up that first, evil
germ of guilt before it could lodge itself in her mind. He knew all about guilt, and he would not allow it to infect her.

“No, Molly,” he said softly. He reached out, pried her hands from her dress, and began to slowly close up the cool mother-of-pearl buttons. “He never knew. He wasn't thinking about either one of us that night. He had been with Annie, and she had just told him she was pregnant. She had waited several months, until it was too late for him to suggest anything—”

He hadn't meant to use this speech to further blacken Beau's name, so he caught himself and started again. “Beau was shocked, and he was angry. He was probably scared to death. It made him reckless.”

“I see.” She watched his hands passively as he completed his task. She touched the fourth finger of his right hand and looked at him quizzically.

“You had on the ring that night,” she said. Her voice was not accusatory. Merely curious. “The Forrest ring.”

“Yes.” But that was all he said. He wouldn't make this any worse. He wouldn't defend himself further at Beau's expense.

He didn't need to. She sighed deeply, and nodded again, as if it were finally beginning to come clear. “Annie told me that he would leave it at home when he visited her. He pretended to be you, hoping that he could commit all his sins in your name. One of the advantages, I suppose, of being an identical twin.”

He just looked at her, thinking how it must look to her. The identical Forrest twins—what a pair of spoiled, black-hearted young bastards they had been. After that night, Jackson had never worn the ring again. It had sat in a small black box on his bedroom dresser for ten years, gathering dust. But there wasn't enough dust in the world to bury the shame of what they had done.

“Maybe that's why you made love to me.” She tilted her head, searching his face, and he forced himself to let her. “I can almost understand that, I think. If Beau was out there pretending to be you—perhaps you decided it would be fair revenge if you pretended, just that once, to be Beau.”

He stood. “No,” he said. “That wasn't why.”

“Then why?” Her lips were parted and her face was wan in the starlight. “Why didn't you just tell me who you really were?”

Looking down at her, he chose his words carefully. “Because I wanted you. Because I had wanted you for years. It's as simple, and as ugly, as that. I was drunk and I was half out of my mind with wanting you.”

“You wanted me.” Molly repeated it strangely, as if she were still trying to find her bearings in this new emotional landscape. “You said that before, that you had wanted me all your life.”

He moved to the open door of the gazebo, breathing in the cold night air as deeply as his lungs would accept it.

“Yes,” he said with his back to her. “And frankly, I would have pretended to be the devil him
self that night, if that had been what it took to get you.”

 

L
IZA WAS PUTTING
the finishing touches on King Willowsong's golden crown—a bigger, fancier crown, which she had designed for him just tonight—when she heard her mother come in the front door.

She was supposed to be asleep. Stuffing the picture under her pillow, she flopped down, peeking quickly at her bedside clock. Ten-thirty.

She looked again. Ten-thirty? She wrapped her fingers around her crayon, trying to hide it, and told herself not to worry. She mustn't, as her mother always lectured her, go jumping to conclusions.

But only ten-thirty? If her mother and Jackson had been falling in love, wouldn't it have taken longer than that?

“Molly!” Aunt Lavinia, who had been sitting in the little living room reading a book, sounded surprised, too. “What on earth are you doing back already? Did you and Jackson quarrel?”

Apparently it was all right for grown-ups to jump to conclusions.

Liza strained to hear her mother's answer. She even held her breath, hoping she could make out some of the words. But her mother talked so softly that all Molly could hear was a low murmur.

Aunt Lavinia spoke again, but now she had lowered her voice, too. They were like two people talking at a funeral.

It was so frustrating. Liza debated the idea of get
ting up and going out there, pretending she wanted a glass of water, or a trip to the bathroom, or something. But somehow she just didn't do it. She lay under her covers, watching as the light from her nightstand lamp caught the glow of the Cuspian moons and scattered it like magic fire all over the walls.

She wasn't going to be sad about this. Maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked. Probably there was some other explanation. Liza was usually pretty good at finding another, happier way to explain things.

Sure! She had an idea! Probably her mother and Jackson had seen right away that they should get married, and her mother had rushed home to tell Liza all about it. She was probably terribly disappointed that Liza was already asleep. Liza should get up right now and run out there to hear the happy news.

But Liza didn't move. She didn't exactly believe that new idea. It didn't answer all the questions—like why her mother and Lavinia were talking so low and serious. If your new idea was going to work, if it was going to make the sad thoughts go away, it had to answer all the questions.

“I'm fine, Lavinia. I just need to get some sleep.” Liza's mom was standing near the hallway, close enough for Liza to hear. “There's so much to do in the morning.”

Well, that might be true, Liza thought. Her mother did sound very tired. Liza raised herself on one elbow, and through the crack in the door she could
see her mom and Lavinia both, standing close together.

Molly was still wearing her Willowsong dress, but her hair needed brushing, and her lipstick was completely gone. She held her shoes in her hand, as if she'd just taken them off. She was smiling politely at Lavinia, but her shoulders sagged a little.

Her mother wasn't making that up—she really was terribly tired. But somehow that didn't make Liza feel any better. She wondered how the fresh, laughing woman who had left this house at eight-thirty had become so exhausted in less than two hours.

While Molly and Lavinia said their goodbyes at the door, Liza lifted her pillow and looked at her picture. She had done a pretty good job of drawing King Willowsong this time, she thought. Drawing was a lot harder than people understood. You had to see things very clearly. That twinkle in King Willowsong's gaze, for instance. At first she had thought it would be done with little gold flashes in his eyes. But it wasn't. After a lot of tries, she had discovered that it was the result of a certain tilt to his head, a tiny dimple at the corner of his smile, a deeper curve at the upper edge of his cheek.

She had finally caught it, though. She looked down at it now, feeling strangely betrayed. How could a man who smiled like that have made her mother look so sad and tired tonight?

She heard the front door close. Sweeping the picture back under the pillow, Liza hustled into her best sleeping position and shut her eyes. A small, soft
sound told her that Molly was standing at her door, checking on her, as she did every night.

Now was her chance. She could sit up, look sleepy, and ask her mother how things had gone on her date. And her mother would come in, sit on the edge of her bed, and tell her all about it.

But Liza couldn't make herself do it. If things were bad, she didn't want to know it yet. She wanted to keep hoping, to keep trying to find another idea, one that would answer all the questions….

Molly shut the door quietly, and her bare footsteps moved lightly away, toward her own bedroom. And then, through the wall that separated the two little rooms, Liza heard the rare and disturbing sound of her mother's muffled weeping.

She listened for a few minutes. It was a terrible sound. It made something swell and ache in her chest the way your toe might throb if you stubbed it on a chair.

After a short time, though, the crying stopped. Liza lay there for a moment and then, sliding her hand under her pillow, she touched her best-ever picture of King Willowsong.

She wrapped her fingers around it slowly and squeezed, crumpling it into a tight, ruined ball in her fist.

 

I
T WAS
S
ATURDAY MORNING
, the day of the park dedication. But Ross wasn't going to the dedication. He was going to Everspring. He idled his car in the front driveway with a touch of silent defiance.

He knew that most Forrest friends—and all the
Forrest family—used the back driveway, the one between the plantation and the carriage house, but he didn't care. This was a formal visit, and he'd be damned if he was going to come in through the back door, his hat in his hand, as if he were a workman begging favors.

This time he wasn't begging. This time he was demanding.

He refused to be intimidated, though the house looked more grand than ever this morning, all spruced up for the Tour of Homes, no doubt. And the grounds seemed to have exploded into color since the last time he was here.

He wasn't much for that stuff. He knew what a rose looked like, because, hell, everyone did. And he knew what a camellia was because once he had been playing football in the yard with his brothers, and his mother had come out waving her hands and yelling, “Boys! No! My camellias!”

But, though that was the extent of his acquaintance with landscaping, he knew when something looked good, and the yard here looked good. Ross had automatically assumed that Lavinia had hired Molly Lorring purely for old times' sake. But maybe not. The kid had obviously grown up to be mighty good at her job.

He reached the front door, and, ignoring the small button for the electric bell, Ross lifted the gleaming brass knocker and rapped it firmly three times. He wasn't requesting admittance, he reminded himself. He was demanding it.