The Real Father (Twins) (Harlequin Superromance No. 927) (9 page)

She tweaked her daughter's long, silky ponytail. “Only you, sweetheart. Only you.”

Liza grinned. “Well, you know I'm right,” she said, hurriedly stuffing her spelling ditto into her
backpack. “Big red roses. And some ruffly white curtains. Come on. Let's go see.”

 

A
N HOUR LATER
, the agent had come and gone, leaving behind an offer so low that, in spite of her eagerness to be rid of this house, Molly had not been able to say yes right away. She'd sleep on it, she had promised the woman. She'd call tomorrow with an answer.

She stood at the kitchen window, watching as Liza climbed the long, low arms of the huge oak, her red coat flashing in and out of winter-bare branches. Had the buyers even noticed how lovely the tree had grown? Yes, it needed trimming—the lowest limbs almost brushed the earth. But a tree like this didn't grow over night. In summer, it would provide cool green shade over the whole yard. Surely the tree alone made the house worth more than this paltry offer. If she spruced things up a bit—curtains, paint, and yes, even roses…

“Hi, Ms. Lorring. We thought that was your car out there. Is Liza with you?”

Molly turned, surprised to see Tommy Cheatwood standing behind her at the kitchen door. She had assumed that Annie would probably have Tommy chained to his bunk bed by now, forcing him to write “I will never hit anyone again” in perfect cursive about a thousand times.

“Hi, Tommy,” she said, stifling the shock she got every time she realized how much he looked like Jackson. “Are you with your mother?” Molly hoped so. Annie had grown up around here, too.
She'd be able to tell Molly what the houses in this neighborhood were really worth these days.

“Nope. She's still at work.” Tommy's restless gaze found the kitchen window, which framed a picture of a little girl swinging upside down, her blue jeans curled over the oak's lowest branch, her red coat flapping over her face. “Is that Liza?”

“Yes. But Tommy,” Molly called as the little boy turned and scooted back down the kitchen stairs, “how did you get he—”

“He's with me.” Jackson appeared in the doorway, his lanky form so like a larger version of Tommy's that Molly momentarily caught her breath.

“I picked him up at school, and we're waiting for his mom to get home from work. The condemned boy's last wish was to find Liza and climb a couple of trees. I didn't have the heart to say no.”

“
You
picked him up? The school calls
you
when Tommy gets in trouble?”

The minute the words were out of her mouth she regretted them. It wasn't any of her business, and she knew it. Jackson didn't owe her explanations about Tommy—any more than she owed him explanations about Liza. Far less, in fact.

And, of course, he didn't offer any. He merely cocked his head at a quizzical angle and smiled as he moved into the kitchen. “Actually, they called Annie, but she couldn't get away from work, so she called me.”

“Oh, of course.” Relieved that the awkward moment had passed safely, Molly sought a smooth way to shift the subject. “You know, from what Liza told
me, I honestly don't think the fight was their fault. Will Tommy be in much trouble at home?”

Jackson shrugged. “Annie makes a lot of noise, but in the end she's pretty much a pushover for the little devil. Can't stay mad at him more than thirty minutes at a stretch. In a couple of years, he's going to figure that out, and then she'll really have her hands full.”

A father's discipline might help, Molly thought. Poor Annie. Molly knew all too well how exhausting single parenting could be, even with a daughter as easy as Liza. She could hardly imagine trying to cope with a moody, willful boy like Tommy. Not without backup.

But she didn't speak the words out loud. It was, she reminded herself sternly, none of her business.

Jackson didn't seem to notice her tension. Hoisting himself to a seat on the bare countertop, he studied the empty kitchen. “I'd almost forgotten this place. It's been a long time.”

“For me, too.” She scanned the room, too, trying to see if through his eyes. Perhaps, without all the unhappy memories, it looked perfectly normal, just another collection of the same cheap appliances found in middle-class kitchens all over America. Jackson wouldn't know how many tense, angry meals had been eaten here. He wouldn't hear the echoes of her father's broken beer bottles, her mother's muffled weeping, her own desperately pounding heart.

Suddenly she realized he had stopped looking at
the kitchen. Now he was looking at her, with the same air of curious speculation.

“A long time. But maybe,” he ventured, “not quite long enough?”

She met his gaze, flushing slightly. “Am I that transparent?”

“Sort of,” he said evenly. “I know you pretty well, M. Want to talk about it?”

No, she didn't want to talk about it. That had always been her mother's cardinal rule: never tell anyone what happened at home. It was a sad, ugly little secret that the three of them conspired to hide from the rest of the world.

Molly touched the chipped Formica on the front of one of the cabinet drawers. She remembered the day that piece had broken off. Her father had been furious at her mother, as if it had been her fault, though even a child could see that the material was shoddy and crumbling with age.

“My father drank,” Molly said suddenly, shocking herself. She hadn't ever discussed this with anyone, not even with Beau. Why now? Why Jackson?

“He drank a lot. It didn't make for a very happy childhood. Frankly, if I had never seen this house again, it would have been fine with me.”

She forced herself to look over at Jackson, expecting to see her inner shock mirrored on his features. But he didn't look horrified. He met her words with a calm acceptance, merely waiting for her to go on.

And instantly she saw why it was Jackson she had finally chosen as her confidant. Though she had
adored Beau—beautiful, universally adored Beau—he had somehow been too lucky, too self-assured. Too perfect. She had always felt it was a miracle that he had picked ordinary Molly Lorring to be his girlfriend. She had struggled daily to live up to the honor.

But rough-and-tumble Jackson, who had spent half of high school in the dean's office, who had thumbed his nose repeatedly at the world's expectations, had always understood that people were flawed. Molly remembered now that Jackson had been the defender of the underdog, the champion of damaged things.

She was suddenly glad she had told him. Even after all these years, the memories were oppressive—and sharing them lightened the load.

“You don't seem surprised,” she said. “Did you already know?”

His smile was wry, tucking itself into one corner of his cheek. “Know what? That the ‘sweet bird of youth' is pure myth? That being a kid is hard as hell? Yeah, I already knew that.”

She laughed quietly. “No, I mean about my father. Did you know he was an alcoholic? Did everyone know? My mother tried so hard to keep it a secret.”

He eyed her thoughtfully. “No, I didn't, not for sure. But I knew something was wrong. I knew you were afraid of upsetting him. In fact, I knew you were irrationally afraid of upsetting anyone—that it was easy for people to take advantage of you.” His gaze softened. “And I knew you were unhappy.”

A foolish lump formed in her throat, and she looked away, toward the wall, where she could almost see herself at fifteen, bending over next to her mother, helping to clear up wet bottle shards in complete, despairing silence.

But that was long ago. And right here on the countertop was her one-way ticket out of the past forever. The contract for the sale of this house.

“Yes,” she admitted. “There were some pretty grim days.” She blinked the image away and looked back at him, smiling. “But there were good days, too. I can remember watching you and Beau drive up in that little red sports car, your blond hair shining in the sun. I was sure you were my white knights, riding up to rescue me and carry me off to Castle Everspring.”

Jackson raised one eyebrow. “Castle Everspring… Is that, by any chance, located on the Planet Cuspian?”

She knew that voice, that lurking mischief. He was teasing her again, just like in the old days. She wished she had something to chuck at him, something harmless like a dish towel, but the kitchen was completely empty. She settled for wrinkling her nose nastily in his direction.

“Are you implying that Liza has inherited my delusional tendencies? Are you suggesting that our reality wires might be just a little loose?”

“No,” he said, dropping deftly down from the countertop and coming to stand next to her at the window. “That's not what I'm suggesting, and you know it.” He put his hands lightly on her shoulders.
“I'm saying you've done well, M. Just look how well you've done.”

They both gazed out at the backyard, where Liza and Tommy were doing battle with a half-dead holly bush. Each child flourished one hand high in the air—something they had learned from
Zorro
reruns, no doubt—and with the other thrust a branch-sword toward their thorny enemy. What they lacked in style they made up in energy, and their faces were ruddy with laughter.

“I'm saying that she's inherited your ability to create beauty and happiness wherever she goes,” he said, “using whatever tools come to hand. And if Everspring helped, I'm glad.”

“It did,” she said softly. “More than you'll ever know. And you helped, too. You and Beau.”

He tightened his hands on her shoulders, just a little. Just enough to make her shiver under the skin. “It was our pleasure, ma'am.”

She didn't turn around. She hardly knew what to make of these new feelings—these stirrings of awareness whenever she was around him. They were complicated—composed partly of confused, half-remembered yearnings for Beau, and partly of strange shimmers of delight in Jackson himself. His laughing eyes, so like Beau. His hard-edged lips, so definitely Jackson. His teasing, lightly offered wisdom, not like either of the boys she had once known, but some new, more mature person she was only now coming to understand.

Suddenly she wanted to kiss him again, as she
had done in the garden. To explore once more the powerful differences between his lips and Beau's.

But already his hands were moving away. He reached down toward the contract that lay faceup on the table, the paltry offer typed in with embarrassing clarity.

“Good God.” He tilted the page up to double-check the figure, as if he couldn't believe it. “You're not going to accept this, are you?”

She felt herself stiffening, and she took a deep breath. “I might,” she said. “I haven't decided yet.”

“Well, don't.” He let the contract fall. “It's ridiculous.”

“I'm not sure it is. The house is a wreck. It wouldn't be realistic to expect anyone to offer full value unless I fixed it up.”

“Well, why don't you?” He scanned the room. “A new roof, an updated facade, maybe tile on the floors in here and in the baths. And you could restore the yard yourself. Heck, M, you know the value of that kind of thing. For every thousand you put into the house, you'd get back three.”

She took a deep breath. “I haven't got the time, Jackson. With the Everspring renovation and now the park landscaping, too—”

“Sure you do.” He seemed impatient, the competent architect analyzing the problem. “You'd hire out the work in the house. I could put together the facade plans for you in a couple of days, and I know people you could use. And this yard is tiny—you know it would be easy.”

“I don't want to,” she said, aware that she sounded stubborn, irrational, but unable or unwilling to change her tone.

He paused, and she could feel the speculation in the silence. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Why not?”

She picked up the contract and rolled it safely into a tube that she gripped with both hands. “I would have to spend time here. Not much, maybe, but more than I want to spend. I just want to sell this wretched house and move on. Can't you understand that?”

Without answering, he turned her around slowly. When she faced him, she saw that his eyes were a dark, shadowed green. They betrayed no irritation with her mulishness. They betrayed nothing at all.

“I know you must be able to understand,” she insisted. “You have a past, too, Jackson. A past you'd rather forget.”

“Of course I understand,” he said finally. “I spent five years avoiding this city and everything it stood for.”

“Well? Then you do know—”

“I know that running from the past is easy, M.” He touched her cheek gently and smiled a shadow smile. “But the problem is you have to keep on running. And eventually it catches you anyway.”

T
OMMY KNEW
he didn't have much time left. Pretty soon Jackson was going to come and get him. Pretty soon he was going to have to face his mom, which would really stink because she was going to be popping, steaming mad. She'd be yelling for hours about how she was going to bust his behind.

But that was okay. He could take it. Just as long as she didn't end up in her room, crying that weird way she cried sometimes, like she was trying to swallow it, like she'd choke before she'd let anyone hear her. Tommy figured it was because she almost never cried. She probably didn't really know how to do it right.

Oh, heck, he wasn't going to worry about that now. Right now he was having fun. For a girl, Liza was pretty cool. She wasn't afraid to get dirty. And she hadn't shrieked when they found a dead lizard in the backyard a few minutes ago. She had picked it up, with her bare hands. Even though she buried it, which was a pretty sissy thing to do, she didn't get all mushy about it. She just dug a hole and got it over with.

“Let's go check out the house, okay?” Liza rose
from the mound of dirt, wiping her palms on her jeans. “I want to see my mom's old room.”

Tommy looked at her from where he stood on the lowest branch of the oak tree. “I don't like being inside. Besides, it's boring—there's no stuff in there. I don't believe anybody ever lived there.”

Liza frowned. “Yes, they did. My mom told me all about it.”

Tommy held his arms out and stepped along the branch like a tightrope walker. It felt cool. It probably looked cool, too. He bounced a little to show he wasn't even scared. “Oh, yeah? How do you know it's true? She could have been making it up.”

Liza's frown deepened. “You mean lying? My mom never lies.”

Tommy laughed out loud. “Yeah, right. Moms lie all the time, dummy.”

“Not mine.”

“Want to bet? I'll bet she tells you your cough medicine won't taste nasty.”

Liza crossed her arms, but she didn't say anything, so Tommy knew he was right. He grinned triumphantly. “And she probably tells you about how you won't grow big and strong if you don't eat your vegetables.”

“Well, that's true. You won't.”

“Ha! Jackson told me he never ate vegetables. And look at him.”

Liza looked annoyed. “Those aren't really lies. They are just—” she stopped for a minute, squinting in concentration “—just little white fibs. Everybody tells those.”

Tommy rolled his eyes. “God, you're such a girl.”

He surveyed the tip of the branch, decided it was too skinny to hold him, and then plopped down, straddling the limb with his legs. He wanted to pretend it was a motorcycle, so he grabbed a couple of smaller branches, gripped them like handlebars, and made loud engine-revving noises.

“I'll bet I know what else she's lied about, too,” he said. “I'll bet she's lied about your dad.”

Liza looked really mad for a minute, and Tommy almost wished he hadn't said anything. He liked being friends with Liza. She felt comfortable, kind of like having a sister. Tommy sometimes wished he had more family. Not that he wanted all the hassle, but it was just that other people had lots of family—sisters, brothers, grandparents, cousins…fathers. So when you had only a mom, you felt kind of outnumbered—like trying to play soccer without a whole team.

“You don't know anything about my dad,” Liza said frostily. “My dad died before I was born.”

Tommy gunned his imaginary engine. “Well, that's what your mom told you anyhow.”

Liza marched over and shook the tree limb. Shook it really hard. Though he hated to be a sissy, Tommy had to hold on to keep from getting dumped on the ground.

“It's true!” Liza held on to the tip of the limb, threatening to shake it again. “Why wouldn't it be true? You don't know anything about it!”

“Moms always lie about dads who aren't around.
My mom lies about it, too. She just says my dad can't live with us. Whatever that means.”

Liza's hand stilled on the branch. She looked at him seriously. “What do you think it means?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? It probably means she had sex without getting married, and then the guy wouldn't marry her.” Perversely, though he had meant to shock her, he didn't like the horrified look he saw on Liza's face. He would bet his best—his only—video game that no one had ever said the word
sex
to her before. She really needed to get a clue.

He put on his best tough, bored expression. “But who cares, anyhow? I figure it was probably just Jackson. Or maybe even that jerk Coach Riser.”

Liza's mouth dropped open into a dumb-looking O. “Really?” She swallowed. “Really? You really think Jackson might be your father?”

He shrugged again, though suddenly there was a weird lump in his throat. The way she said “father”… She made it sound like a word you'd use in your bedtime prayers. He wished like fire he hadn't ever brought it up. He'd thought it would make him feel better, smarter and tougher and cooler than Liza, who didn't know anything about anything. But he felt rotten. Really rotten.

“Maybe. Or like I said, maybe Coach Riser.” He tried not to say Coach's name any differently. He wouldn't want Liza to think he was hoping it might be Coach, deep inside. “Who knows? Who cares? Obviously whoever it is doesn't want to admit it, right?”

“Oh, Tommy.” Liza's eyes were shining with tears. He wanted to laugh at her for being such a sissy, but he couldn't quite get it out. He began to be afraid that his eyes might start shining, too.

“Anyhow, let's talk about something else. This is a dumb conversation.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “And you'd better not ever tell anyone what I said.”

“I won't,” Liza promised softly. She stared at the ground a long time, and when she looked up, her face was really sweet, but with a wet line on each cheek. “I know. I'll tell you a secret, too, okay? Something I don't want other people to know, so we'll be even. But you have to promise you won't laugh about it.”

“About what?”

She flushed, but she lifted her chin bravely. “About the imaginary planet I've invented.”

“Sounds dumb.”

“It's not. It's a cool story. It's exciting. Right now King Willowsong—”

“Is that the guy in your picture? The guy who looked like Jackson?”

She ignored him. “King Willowsong is lost in the ice cave, and the Planet Cuspian is about to be taken over by Mudbluffs who have set up a death ray on the first golden moon.”

In spite of himself, Tommy was interested. “What are Mudbluffs? Are they monsters? You can't have a very exciting story if there aren't any monsters.”

She tilted her head and gave him a look. “If
you're going to keep interrupting, I'm not going to tell you.”

He considered telling her to take her dirty look and get lost, but he really wanted to know about the Mudbluffs. So he faked a yawn and settled back against the tree trunk. “Oh, okay, fine. Tell me about your dumb old planet.”

 

M
OLLY LOOKED DOWN
at the science fair entry on the table in front of her, a rather clever experiment involving tender green cress seedlings and damp cotton. It demonstrated the effects of drought on root depth. For a fourth grader, the student had done a beautiful job. If it had been any other school, Molly might have suspected that the work was not the student's own. But at Radway, overachieving was a way of life.

She moved on to the next project, an ambitious attempt to invent ways to save the aquifer, complete with full-color computer-generated charts and graphs. The name on the expensive tri-fold display was Junior Caldwell, so she gave it another look.

Fairly amazing, even by Radway standards. Obviously Junior was a science prodigy. She could picture him clearly, based partly on Liza's description, partly on the slightly pompous language of this report. Small, stiff, tidy, brilliant. Thick glasses and perma-pressed clothes.

Poor Junior. No wonder he hated Tommy Cheatwood, who was stylishly slouchy by instinct. Tommy Cheatwood, who had simply been born cool.

“So what do you think? See a winner yet?” Janice Kilgore, the vice principal, came up behind Molly and peered over her shoulder. “God, not Junior, I hope! If Junior wins another science fair, he won't have a single friend left.”

Molly smiled at the other woman, who had called her this morning, begging a favor. The county agricultural agent, who had been scheduled to judge the Earth Science entries this year, had the flu. Would Molly consider being his replacement? Molly had said yes, of course, though she had a million things to attend to at Everspring. In these few short weeks, she had grown quite fond of Janice Kilgore.

“I haven't decided yet. They're all so good.” She glanced around Radway's high-tech media center, where scores of entries were on display. “I don't see how I'm going to pick just one.”

“Eenie, meenie, miny, mo works, I hear,” Jan said, grinning. “Oh, look, there's Ellen. Ellen Fowler, our librarian.” She waved vigorously. “Ellen! Come meet Liza Lorring's mother.”

Smiling, the librarian made her way toward them, carefully avoiding the posters and pedestals, volcanoes and ant farms and simulated rain forests. She held out her hand.

“Molly Lorring. I'm so delighted to finally meet you.” Ellen Fowler was in her late thirties, a beautifully groomed blonde with lovely, serene features.

“We're all enormously fond of Liza. But I had another reason for wanting to meet you. I was a great
fan of your mother's. In fact, she's probably the reason I became a librarian.”

Molly was intrigued. Her mother had run the Demery Public Library for twenty-five years, so perhaps it wasn't surprising, but still… She would be pleased to think she had left behind such a strong legacy. “Really? How so?”

Ellen laughed, a soft well-modulated tinkle of sound. “She was good to me at a time in my life when I was very unhappy. I was thirteen, and my parents were going through an ugly divorce. She seemed to know without my telling her. She took me under her wing—let me be her unofficial assistant.” The woman smiled. “I think I've associated peace and comfort with libraries ever since.”

“Not libraries,” Jan interjected. “
Media centers.
And there's nothing very peaceful about this one today.” She sniffed the air suspiciously. “What on earth is that horrible smell? Oh, no! Is Mason Stewart's volcano erupting
again?
”

Apologizing, Janice bustled back toward the smoking cone of clay, leaving Molly alone with the librarian, who watched the young administrator depart with amused tolerance.

“Yes, she's right.
Media center.
More computers than books in here these days. Makes me long to be thirteen again, shelving novels alongside your mother.” She looked at Molly curiously. “How is she?”

“She's great,” Molly said carefully. “She's remarried, a great guy named Mitchell, and the two of them are doing a lot of traveling.”

The older woman's eyes lit up. “Don't tell me. The Grand Canyon?” When Molly nodded, she smiled. “She used to talk about it all the time, used to show me picture books about it. She thought it sounded like the most beautiful place on earth. She loved the whole idea of the West. I think she felt a little—” Ellen Fowler seemed to be searching for the right word “—a little confined here in Demery.”

Molly didn't quite know how to answer. She fiddled with the blue foam aquifer in Junior Caldwell's project and smiled noncommittally.

“How about you?” The librarian touched Molly's shoulder softly. “I was amazed to hear you were back in Demery. Especially at Everspring.” As if she feared that her comment might have lacked diplomacy, she moved on smoothly. “It's such a small town. It suits me perfectly, but I thought you probably hankered for wide-open spaces the way your mother did.”

Molly looked up. “I'm only here for a couple of months,” she said evenly. “Just until the Everspring renovation is completed.”

Ellen Fowler looked surprised. “But Liza—” For the first time, her serenity seemed ruffled. “Liza has been telling her teachers that you'll be staying. That you'll be living in Demery. Just the other day she mentioned that you were going to look for a dog, because you wouldn't be living in an apartment anymore.”

Molly felt a sinking deep in her stomach. Staying? Was this Liza's new fantasy? Had dreams of Demery supplanted dreams of the Planet Cuspian? Had
she begun imagining herself as the princess of Castle Everspring? And a dog. Liza hadn't begged for a dog in years.

Oh, how terrible to have to disappoint her. And yet it was unavoidable. In two months, three at the most, they'd be returning to Atlanta, to their spacious, eighth-floor condo, which Liza had always seemed to like just fine. But, of course, compared to Everspring…

How could Molly possibly explain that, for them, Everspring might just as well be on another planet?

“I'm afraid she must be confused,” she said as calmly as she could. “I have a landscaping business in Atlanta. My partner is running it while I'm away. I couldn't possibly stay beyond the spring.”

“I see.” The older woman looked tranquil again, her professional poise covering up any uncomfortable deductions she might have made. “Kids are funny, aren't they? You never really know what they're thinking.”

“It's just some misunderstanding. I'll talk to Liza.”

“Of course. If you think you must. But a lot of people are going to be disappointed. Your mother had a great many friends who were looking forward to seeing you again.” Ellen spoke without looking at Molly, apparently focused on straightening an unsteady display of edible plants. “And we could definitely use a good landscape architect around here.”