The Secret She Kept (4 page)

S
AVANNAH’S GAZE WENT
from Jake to Allie and back as he leaned against the stone column and covered his eyes with his hands. He was acting weird, as though he was fighting off a sudden migraine or something. Savannah couldn’t figure out what she’d missed.

“Jake?”

He didn’t appear to hear her.

Allie glanced up at him then, as if finally noticing his strange behavior. “You don’t like my picture?”

Savannah glared at him anew, daring him to ignore her daughter’s hurt feelings, but he didn’t react.

“It’s great, Allie,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “The best.” He held the drawing out in front of him and stared at it, as if just now appreciating all the detail. “I’ll hang it on the refrigerator at my grandmother’s house.”

“Can I visit you sometime so I can see it hanging?”

“I don’t think—” Savannah began.

“Hey, Allie, I have to talk to your mom about something really important. Could you go check on your brother?”

Savannah observed him more closely, her heart picking up speed. Something was definitely wrong. She turned to her daughter. “Go. Make certain Logan’s not bothering Zach. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

Allie’s eyes sought out Jake’s, but he didn’t meet her gaze. She pivoted and headed toward the office, shoulders sagging. How had she become so eager for Jake’s attention so quickly? She’d have to unlearn that, and fast.

Jake slid down until he was squatting, braced against the column behind him. Savannah was so unaccustomed to him showing any sign of weakness that she wasn’t sure how to react.

“Are you…okay?” she asked finally, in a low voice so Allie wouldn’t hear.

Her daughter opened the office door, then looked back at them once again before slipping inside, out of earshot.

Jake sprang up angrily and pushed himself away from the column. “When were you going to tell me?” The tightly controlled rage in his voice was unmistakable.

“Tell you what?” But something inside Savannah knew, even before her brain processed the message. She crossed her arms protectively over her chest and sought out the support of the stone wall of the building.

“When were you going to mention that Allie’s mine, Savannah?”

Dizziness made her vision blur. She closed her eyes and feared she might throw up as she fought the bile bubbling from deep inside.

“When?” His demand made her jump, and his anger sparked her own.

She uncrossed her arms and straightened, then stepped forward. She shook all over, and clenched her hands to fight the trembling. “I wasn’t going to tell you. You were gone.”

“It’s true then. She’s my…daughter.” He ran a hand through his hair, staring into space, unseeing. The tic in his jaw belied the eerie calm that fell over them.

“How did you figure it out?” Savannah asked quietly. “She doesn’t resemble you at all—”

“She doesn’t resemble me so you planned to take the secret to the grave with you, didn’t you? The birthmark on her neck. It’s the same as my sister’s. Same shape, same place. My dad’s mother had it, too. Apparently, it shows up in our family among the females.”

Savannah would never have guessed. She’d kissed the mark countless times, but had never reckoned it might make such a difference in their lives. Ever since Jake had returned to town, she’d soothed herself with the reassurance there was no way he could find out the truth….

Savannah slumped against the wall again, in desperate need of its solidity. Her head fell back and hit the stones, but she barely felt it. Her mind became numb. She couldn’t form a thought, knew only that her world was falling apart. The security she’d clung to since the divorce was evaporating like a cool mist on a scorching day.

Her chest constricted as she considered Allie. Her baby. Her daughter, who already hated her, yet would need her more than ever if she learned the truth.

Jake had paced down the sidewalk. Savannah took several steps after him.

“You can’t tell her. It’ll crush her. She’s been through so much—”

“Whose fault is that?” He rounded on her, fury in his eyes. “What the hell were you thinking, Savannah?”

She glanced about to make sure no one could hear. “This isn’t the place to discuss the subject.”

“Forgive me if I’m not too concerned about that.”

“Consider Allie, Jake. For one second, think about that little girl and what it will do to her life if she’s the talk of the town because of something somebody overheard on the street.”

He closed the distance between them, anger radiating from him in waves. He backed her against the wall until their thighs touched.

“You know what I’d like to do right now, Savannah? I’d like to wring your neck!” But he shoved his hands into his pockets. “How could you keep this from me? For all these years?”

In some corner of her mind—a corner she usually kept dark—she’d known this could happen. But she’d never imagined how awful the reality would be.

“I refuse to discuss this with you in the middle of downtown on a public sidewalk,” she said. “If you want to talk, we talk later. Tonight. After the kids are in bed. I have to go to them now.”

She inched from between him and the wall, but he grabbed her wrist, conveying that he wasn’t about to let the matter drop.

“Let me go,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Where can I find you tonight? Because we
will
be discussing this in a lot more detail.”

“Fifth and Vine. A red duplex. I live in the one on the left. Don’t come before nine, because the kids will be awake.”

He nodded once but still didn’t release her. She pulled on her arm, but he held tight as he stared at her. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

“Kind of hard to tell you when you
ran away
.” She yanked her hand downward and freed herself, then walked toward the office. At the door, she paused and schooled her features to reveal nothing of the tempest inside her.

“Tell my grandmother I went to move her car closer.”

Savannah made a point of not glancing at him as she entered.

“Mom! Make Allie stop staring at me like that.”

“I’m not staring at him,” she said. “Brat.”

“Allie. Don’t call your brother names. Logan, get your homework out, go to the conference room and start on it.”

The little boy groaned, but Savannah barely noticed.

Zach entered from the back room then, helping Mrs. Levine through the doorway with her walker. Thankfully, they’d missed the bickering.

Zach introduced the women and Savannah forced herself to be polite. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You, too, dear. Any idea where that grandson of mine is?”

“He went to get the car.” Savannah assumed Zach’s place to help her to the door.

Mrs. Levine smiled warmly at her. “This young man’s got a talented crew. Those custom cabinets are lovely.”

“I keep begging them to do some furniture for me, but they claim paying customers come first,” Savannah said, vaguely wondering how she was managing to speak coherently, making small talk with Jake’s grandma as they headed to the door.

Jake opened it from the outside just as they reached it, and gently took his grandmother’s arm. Savannah tried to avoid eye contact and any kind of conversation, but she met his eyes automatically when he touched her arm.

“I’ll see you later.” His quiet words sounded like a threat.

She let the door swing shut once Jake and Mrs. Levine had cleared it, and went to her desk. There, she sat and shuffled papers to appear busy, even though she couldn’t possibly focus on work.

Zach didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong. “They’re decent,” he said. “Had some interesting ideas.”

Suddenly, now that she had a crisis to deal with, the land deal wasn’t so pressing to Savannah. “What kind of ideas?”

“They proposed forming a partnership just for this project. Mrs. Levine is very interested in what we’d do with the land. She wants to keep her immediate property and the home she lives in, which is close to one edge of the forty acres.”

He continued explaining something about varied floor plans and cohesive styles of homes, but Savannah found it difficult to pay attention.

“So where did you end it?” she asked when he stopped talking and waited for her to say something.

“I’m running their partnership idea by my lawyer, first off.”

“You’re thinking about proceeding?”

Zach strolled around his desk. “I don’t think I can pass it up. If this is the only way the project will happen, I can work with a partner. Besides, it’ll be cheaper for us in the short term.”

“Cheaper’s good.”

“Tell me what you know about Barnes.”

“I thought it was Mrs. Levine’s land.”

“He’ll be in on it, too.”

“He doesn’t even live here. Why involve him?”

Zach gave her a puzzled look. “Because Odessa Levine wants him involved. She holds all the cards right now. Is there a reason I shouldn’t work with him?”

Now Zach seemed suspicious of her, which wasn’t at all what Savannah wanted. She struggled to provide him with an honest response.

“Jake is…diligent. Competitive. Loyal until you cross him, then he carries a grudge….”

“Have you crossed him?”

She wouldn’t call it that, exactly. “We’ve known each other since kindergarten. Competed in everything.”

“Is that all?”

“What do you mean, is that all?”

Zach studied her, and that made her antsy. She checked her watch, only to find she still had almost an hour to go before she could bow out for the day.

“Maybe what I should ask is whether you can work with him if we make this deal.”

“Of course. We need this to happen.”

“Last chance. If there’s anything I ought to know about Barnes, now’s the time to bring it up.”

She shook her head. “Go for the deal.” Her voice lacked enthusiasm, but it was the best she could do.

Zach stared at her, so she picked up a pen and drew lines under the words on the top paper, as if she was reading intently. Finally, she heard him sit down, reach for the phone and dial.

Savannah propped her elbows on the desk and shielded her eyes with her hands, still acting as though she was hard at work—when in fact tears threatened. She couldn’t let them fall.

What was she going to do? What if Jake told Allie the truth? Her throat swelled and seemed to cut off her oxygen. The tears overflowed at last, dropping onto the paper and turning it into a black-and-white smear.

She sucked in air as quietly as possible, fighting to breathe evenly. Perhaps in a few years, when Allie was old enough to understand, she could handle the news. Right now, after the divorce, Savannah had to rebuild Allie’s world. She couldn’t bear the thought of Allie having another reason to hate her.

She eyed Allie sideways, from under the cover of her hands. The young girl was sprawled on the floor, drawing again, totally unaware. Good. Savannah wanted to keep her in ignorant bliss for as long as possible. Wanted to mend the rift between them and get their relationship back on track before hitting her with another life-altering shock.

Allie was independent, determined to do things her own way. Her butterfly ponytail holder was so little-girl, her concentration on her artwork so grown-up. She was at that awkward stage, no longer a young child but not yet a teenager. Soon she’d be in middle school and face the craziness that was adolescence.

Savannah ached to hold her and tell her everything would be okay, but she knew too well what reaction that would get.

Tears overflowed anew and Savannah plucked a tissue from the box on her desk to sop them up before anyone noticed. Jake had to understand what was best. He might be mad as a bull at her, but he had to step back and acknowledge how much it would hurt Allie to tell her.

Her jaw stiff, Savannah dabbed her eyes with the tissue once more and took a fortifying breath. Her control was back and she wouldn’t permit it to slip away again.

J
AKE ROUNDED THE CORNERS
on the gravel roads too fast and nearly planted himself and his bike in a ditch several times, but he didn’t slow down.

He’d been riding for hours. If he’d gone in a straight line, he’d be halfway to Montana by now. The freedom the road offered, however, was an illusion, one he fell for less and less the longer he rode.

All of a sudden he was a father. Something told him that even if he’d had years to digest the news, he wouldn’t be used to it.
A father.

His daughter was eleven. Hardly a child anymore. And all he knew about her was that she liked to draw horses and could be moody and withdrawn around her mother. Something inherited from each of her parents, he thought resentfully. He wondered what else she’d gotten from his DNA besides the talent for art and the birthmark.

The sun had set hours ago, darkening the hilly fields so that he could barely make them out in the dim moonlight. He was just outside Lone Oak now, only minutes away from nine o’clock and the chance to confront Savannah and get some answers out of her.

Just the thought of her made his blood boil. Who did she think she was, to control everyone else’s life? Sure, he’d fled Lone Oak, and he’d admit he’d made damn certain no one could track him down. But a lot of years had elapsed between the night he’d taken off and tonight. Plenty of time for her to find him and fess up.

He made his way to Fifth and Vine quickly, his pulse speeding up as he arrived at her house.

The red duplex could use a coat of paint or two. The place was on a hill, and Savannah’s side sat atop two single-car garages. Jake pulled his bike up close to one of them and ascended the crumbling concrete steps.

A screen door was all that kept him out. Peering in, he could see a short hall, with heavy wooden doors on either side. He entered and knocked on the door to the left.

It opened almost instantly, but instead of stepping back to let him in, Savannah barreled into the hallway. She led him outside, down the concrete stairs, and seated herself on the second step from the bottom.

“Nice to see you, too,” he said to her back.

“Keep your voice down, please. I don’t want to wake them up.”

He ran a hand through his hair and glanced around the quiet neighborhood before relenting and sitting down next to her.

“Still mad?” she asked.

“What the hell do you think?” he shot back.

A knuckle cracked in the otherwise hushed night. “Try to stop making it all about you for a minute, and listen to me. You cannot tell Allie about this.”

“She has every right to know, Savannah.”

Her left hand flew to his knee and gripped it. “You can’t. She can’t handle it.”

He shook his head, weary in every cell of his body. “You haven’t changed a bit. You’re still all about control, aren’t you?” He chuckled, a cold, humorless sound emanating from deep in his throat. “I’d think that after being married and having to play nice with others you’d tone it down a little, but you’re still every bit as dedicated to being in charge.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Oh, yes, it is. You’re the one who’s been manipulating other people’s lives in order to hide the big embarrassment of sleeping with me.”

Savannah’s jaw dropped and she stared at him. “If that’s your opinion, then it just goes to show you don’t have the first clue about being a parent.”

“I haven’t had the chance to be a parent. That was taken away from me.”

“You took it away from yourself by leaving town.”

J
AKE BOLTED UP
and paced down the driveway. Savannah waited, her tension skyrocketing.

A couple of minutes later, he came back, his arms crossed over his chest. “What I want to understand,” he said in an obviously restrained voice, “is why you’ve kept this a secret from me. Why you thought I didn’t deserve to know I have a child.”

Savannah really had no desire to get into the subject, had no desire to relive the past or remember that awful period when she’d been so alone and expecting a baby. Had no desire to justify the decisions she’d made, even though she still, today, firmly believed they’d been the right ones.

But she had to. There was no way out of it. Jake would never stop pestering her until she explained, and she yearned for nothing more than for him to leave her and her children in peace.

“You want to know all about it?” she asked.

He raised his brows expectantly.

“Fine.” She gazed at her lap for an eternity, struggling to figure out where to start. What to say. Finally she rubbed her hands over her thighs and jumped in at the beginning.

“I was back at college for spring semester, a month or so after we were together. I did a pregnancy test. Four of them, actually, hoping that if I kept trying, one would give me the answer I wanted. But no, they were 100 percent accurate. I freaked.”

Jake sat on the step next to her, but maintained his distance. Distance was what she wanted, Savannah reminded herself.

“I came home the following weekend,” she told him. “I’d heard you’d gone before I returned to school, but I thought maybe you’d be back. I went to your house and your sister told me you’d left town permanently. She had no idea where you were.”

Savannah wasn’t about to go into detail about how his absence had sent her into another downward spiral. She’d needed him then, needed someone to face such an insurmountable problem with her. Someone who was as affected by it as she was.

“You’d run away,” she said.

“I didn’t run away. If you want to get technical, I was sent away.”

“What do you mean?”

He was quiet for several moments. “My dad kicked me out of the house. He was bent out of shape because I was gone all night that time—with you, but he didn’t know that. My sister had gotten picked up by the cops. My dad was in Kansas City for a conference and had to leave early to deal with her problems. He was livid I wasn’t around to do so.”

“You were always handling your sister’s problems. Problems your dad should’ve dealt with.”

“That’s why I blew up. That particular battle had been brewing for years—ever since my mom died—and we finally let it all out.” He swallowed, staring off into the distance. “It was ugly.”

“So instead of just getting out of his house, you got out of town.”

“Right.”

Neither of them said anything for a long while and Savannah found herself waffling between sympathy for Jake and anger that he hadn’t been there for her.

At last, he broke the silence. “You can’t hold it against me that I wasn’t around. I had no idea what you were going through. Maybe if you hadn’t told me what a big mistake sleeping together was, if we’d still been together, I wouldn’t have left so easily.”

“Don’t put the blame on me, Jake.”

She had wondered frequently, though, how her life would have been different if she hadn’t run scared from him. That was what had happened, even though she’d denied it to herself back then. The morning after they’d made love, she’d flipped out. The feelings Jake had evoked in her were way too intense and out of control and she couldn’t handle them.

Then
or
now.

“Michael was home from college that weekend, too.”

“Moser.”

“Yeah.”

“Whom you married.” He said it as an accusation.

Savannah stood, unable to keep sitting by Jake, zigzagging between past emotions and the spectrum he was putting her through now. Just being around Jake was like trying to sprint through quicksand.

“Michael and I were friends. We’d already dated several times.”

“I remember.”

“We went out that weekend. I called him because…well, I guess I wanted to talk about it. I hadn’t told anyone and I knew I could trust him.”

She’d also known he was “safe.” He didn’t make her do or feel crazy things the way Jake did.

“We had dinner at Tut’s and I was rotten company. Afterward, we went on a long drive and I told him everything. He was really understanding. Offered to help.”

“So he popped the question.”

Savannah glared at Jake. “No, he didn’t pop the question. He offered to help me find you.”

Jake apparently had nothing to say to that.

“We tracked you to the bus depot in Denver. He and I even drove there the next weekend, hoping to uncover a clue to where you were.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t want to be found.”

“Obviously. Michael and I hunted for you for weeks. We drove all over to small towns, asking people if they’d spotted you. Called hospitals and police stations.

“My dad never suspected what was going on. I missed a lot of classes, and when spring break rolled around, my pregnancy was starting to show. I hid it for a while, but I knew I had to tell my father. That’s when Michael proposed and I quit school.”

J
AKE CLAMPED HIS JAW SHUT
to keep his comment to himself. Michael Moser had been good enough for her, but
he
hadn’t. That she’d turned him away after one night burned him to this day. One nearly perfect night that he could still recollect clearly…Her pale silky skin, ghostly white in the moonlight shining in through the window. The long slender body that had sent him into orbit. The waves of reddish brown hair that had covered her delicate shoulders. He hadn’t forgotten a single detail.

That night had resulted in a little girl, he reminded himself.

“What’s she like?” he asked, emotion softening his voice.

“Who?”

“Allie. Tell me about her.”

Savannah studied him in the near darkness and moved closer, then sat down next to him again, lost in thought.

“She’s smart. Not just book smart—she grasps things about life. You already saw she’s a talented artist. I never realized she got that from you. I’d forgotten.”

“What’d she get from you?”

Savannah smiled, but the smile faded into a grimace. “She’s as stubborn and independent as anything.”

“She got your eyes,” Jake said, surprised at the tenderness he felt toward the child he’d only met the other day.

“She got my big feet and my tangle-prone hair. She’s a shy child, normally. Total introvert.”

“Where did
that
come from?”

“Some recessive gene buried deep inside one of us, I guess.”

“I want to get to know her,” Jake said without thinking. Once the comment was out, he didn’t retract it. He couldn’t deny its source was more than mere curiosity about the person who shared half his genetic makeup.

“That’s not possible.” Savannah’s voice lacked all hint of the gentleness it had held when she’d described Allie. Now it was hard. Unrelenting.

But that was too bad, because Jake wasn’t about to be denied. He’d missed eleven years with Allie and he refused to miss more.

“It’ll have to be possible. She’s my daughter, Savannah. You can’t prevent me from getting to know her.”

She popped up off the step again.

“Tell me how you’re going to work that. ‘Hey, Allie, this strange man who just showed up in town out of nowhere wants to hang out with you, and I’m okay with it, even though he’s a virtual stranger.’ She’ll think I’ve lost it.”

“So let her think that.”

“You don’t understand. She is not at her best now. She’s hurting and she hates me. I can’t do anything to push her further away.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t about you.”

She spun around and faced him. “It’s about
her,
Jake,” she hissed. “All about Allie. I can’t let her find out that the man she’s called Dad all these years…isn’t. Not right now. Can’t you understand how that might shatter her already very fragile world?”

Jake struggled to see things from the point of view of the daughter he barely knew. Wouldn’t she want to have the truth? He couldn’t quite imagine what discovering something so shocking and fundamental about who you were would be like. Would it hurt her or help her to learn he was her father? The last thing he wanted was to hurt Allie in any way.

“I’ll agree to hold off on telling her. For a little while. It’ll probably be easier on her if we get to know each other first.”

Why he expected that to appease Savannah or make her reasonable, he wasn’t sure.

She shook her head vehemently. “We haven’t decided you’re going to get to know her.”

“I’m her father.”

“You could pick up and go at any moment. In fact, aren’t you leaving soon?”

“I’ll be here for a few more days, and then I’ll be back several times if things work out with my grandmother’s land. But leaving town doesn’t mean walking out of Allie’s life. There are such things as phone calls and e-mail. She could even fly out and visit.”

Fear washed over Savannah’s face. “She’s not old enough to do that.”

He stood and walked up to her. “I’m going to get to know my daughter. We can work together on this, or you can piss me off and push me. Trust me when I say that won’t be to your advantage.”

“Are you threatening me?” Her teeth were clenched and her eyes held a vicious protectiveness he’d never witnessed.

“Just explaining where I’m coming from.”

“Are you telling me you’ll take legal action?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

“Sure sounded like you did.”

“I don’t want this to be ugly, Savannah. We have a child together, and both of us have some rights in the matter. All three of us. Allie has the right to know who her father is, and I have the right to know her.”

“Simple, isn’t it?”

“Dammit, Savannah! There’s nothing simple about it. I just found out several hours ago that I have an eleven-year-old daughter I never knew about. You tell me what’s simple about that.”

“Lower your voice,” she said coldly. “You may have rights as her father, but the minute you do her harm is the minute you give those up. Having her overhear you would qualify as doing her harm.”

Jake pressed his thumb against his lip. The one thing Savannah was correct about was that if Allie overheard them arguing about his being her dad, it would hurt her.

“You’re not the only one who’s reeling here,” Savannah said. “For almost twelve years, I’ve been in this without you. Now, suddenly, here you are, barging in and inserting yourself into our lives. Wanting to take my daughter to Montana. It doesn’t work that way, Jake.”