The Truth About Tara (19 page)

“You’re ’sposed to tell me not to,” Danny said.

“Nah,” Jack said. “I don’t feel like it. Kind of like you didn’t feel like racing the other kids.”

Danny said nothing. The wind whipped through the park, creating a whistling noise. In the distance, Jack could hear the other campers laughing and shouting on the playground. A group of people waiting to board another tour boat talked among themselves, their voices carrying on the breeze.

“My little brother would never race me when we were growing up,” Jack said. “I was older than Mike and he hated to lose.”

“My little brother always wins,” Danny said.

“That’s how it happens sometimes,” Jack said. “But just because you come in second doesn’t mean you should stop trying.”

Danny shook his head. “No. Trying doesn’t work. I c-can’t do it.”

Jack sensed the boy was trying to tell him something important, but he was having a hard time following his train of thought. “What can’t you do?”

Danny was silent for a long time before he muttered, “Anything right.”

“What?” Jack said. “Who said that?”

Danny’s lower lip trembled. Whoever had implanted that idea in his head had dug deep.

“Well, whoever it was, they were wrong,” Jack said. “You can do lots of things.”

Danny blinked back tears. “No, I c-can’t.”

“Hey, you’re the one who spotted the pony today. And remember all those fish you caught?”

Danny shook his head as though Jack hadn’t spoken. “Something wrong with me.”

“No way, bud,” Jack said with feeling.

“Something wrong with me,” Danny repeated. “That’s why she didn’t want me.”

Jack digested the information and swallowed a groan. Now they were getting to the crux of the matter. “Are you talking about your mother?’

He nodded, tears running down his face.

Ah, hell.
Had Danny’s mother really made a habit of asking Danny what was wrong with him when he couldn’t perform up to his brother’s standards? Didn’t she know how special children with Down syndrome were?

“I want you to listen to me, Danny.” Jack waited until the boy looked at him. “Nothing is wrong with you. You’re good and kind and fun to be around. I wouldn’t change a single thing about you. And neither would Tara or Carrie.”

Danny caught his breath on a sob. Jack reached over and hugged him. Danny held tight.

“I don’t want to hear any more about what you can’t do,” Jack said. “I want you to start showing what you can do.”

After a long moment, Danny’s hold on Jack lessened. He ruffled Danny’s hair, then stood up and extended a hand to the boy. He pulled him to a standing position. They walked side by side to the playground, with Jack unable to think of anything else to say.

Once they arrived, Danny sat down on a swing a distance away from the other children. He scuffed his foot in the sand but didn’t swing.

Tara got up from the park bench where she’d been watching the children and came to stand beside Jack. “What was all that about?”

Jack told her as succinctly as possible, unable to keep the disgust out of his voice. “Can you believe a mother would do that to her own flesh and blood?”

Tara shook her head, her expression troubled. “There’s lots of ignorance surrounding mental disabilities. Danny’s mother might just be uneducated.”

“You’re being too kind.” Jack bit off the words. “I wish I could give her a piece of my mind.”

“It’s better you give Danny your support,” she said.

“Yeah, but I don’t think I got through to him.” Jack gestured to where Danny still sat motionless on the swing. His sadness arrowed straight to his heart.

Tara braced a hand on Jack’s shoulder. Without warning, she brought her head close to his and kissed him on the lips. The contact was short but unutterably sweet.

“What was that for?” he asked in surprise.

“For trying,” she said. “And for caring.”

The wind was playing havoc with her hair again, blowing the errant strands into her face. He brushed them back, wishing she wasn’t wearing sunglasses so he could see her eyes. It was time, he thought, to lighten the mood and make a move.

“Would you see through me if I capitalized on this warm feeling you seem to have for me right now by inviting you to my place for dinner tonight?” he asked.

Her lips curved into a gorgeous smile. “Only if you tried to get me into bed when I got there.”

He grimaced. “You got me. That’s exactly what I planned to do. Forgive me?”

“After how you just handled things with Danny,” she said, reaching up to touch his cheek, “I’d forgive you anything.”

* * *

C
ARRIE
LET
THE
SURF
WASH
over her bare feet early on Friday evening, barely able to believe that she was enjoying the warm, wet feel of the salt water. If someone had told her even three weeks ago that she’d go on a boat tour and a walk along the beach the same day, she wouldn’t have believed it.

But then three weeks ago, she hadn’t met Gustavo.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said from where he walked alongside her. “I once ran across the University of Maryland campus wearing nothing but sneakers and a smile.”

“You’re pulling my leg,” she said, laughing.

It seemed as if she’d been laughing all day. Maybe all week. And why not? She’d been ridiculously lucky the night they played bingo, winning two jackpots that gave her enough money to pay for Danny’s second week of camp. Then earlier today, when they’d chaperoned the field trip to Chincoteague together, they’d had such a good time that Carrie had readily accepted when he’d invited her and Danny to dinner.

She’d also said yes when he asked her to take an after-dinner stroll on the beach. Danny and Susie had stayed behind with a neighbor who’d dropped by unexpectedly and offered to watch them.

“Oh, yes, I did,” he said. “This was the dead of winter. At one point I went down on some icy pavement and slid on my butt about ten yards. It was so cold I couldn’t even feel it.”

She laughed at the word picture he’d painted. “Why would you do a fool thing like that? The streaking craze was long over by then.”

“I told you,” he said. “My roommate dared me.”

“So if I dared you to strip to your birthday suit right now, you’d do it,” she challenged.

“Damn straight.”

He grabbed the hemline of his shirt and tugged it over his head.

“Hold on a minute!” Carrie shouted. “I didn’t dare you. It was a hypothetical.”

One of his hands was already at the waistband of his shorts. He grinned at her, looking better bare chested than he did with his shirt on, impressive for a man in his late forties. He had good muscle definition, a flat abdomen and just the right amount of chest hair.

“You didn’t make that clear,” he said.

Behind him the sun was low in the sky, casting red-and-gold streaks over the water. It covered him in a soft glow, highlighting his almost-black hair and the long nose that gave his handsome features a Latin cast. She couldn’t say for sure what looked better, the sunset or the man. She almost protested when he tugged his shirt back on.

Time to focus on the sunset,
she thought.

“It’s been so long since I was at the beach this time of night that I forgot how darn pretty it was,” Carrie said.

“I love coming down here,” Gustavo said. “Whoever buys my grandma’s B and B and gets it up and running again should advertise that the beach is in the backyard.”

A tall sandy embankment rose on one side of the narrow strip of beach, with the B and B and neighboring houses set well back from the cliff. Steep wooden staircases leading to those houses dotted the beach at regular intervals.

Small seabirds soared parallel to the waves, waiting until the water receded to snatch crustaceans exposed by the surf.

“Then don’t sell it,” she said. “I know you closed the house to guests, but the business is already in place. You could hire somebody to fix up the house and help you out.”

“That’s an idea,” Gustavo said. “Got anybody in mind?”

Me,
Carrie thought. Just as quickly, she rejected the idea. She already feared she was spending too much time with Gustavo. What kind of message would it send if she finagled it so she saw him every single day?

“Hey, you don’t have a job right now, do you?” Gustavo asked, almost as though he’d read her mind. He didn’t wait for her answer. “If I do decide to keep the place and reopen it, would you be interested?”

“No,” she said quickly.

“Why not? You like to cook, right? And I’d have no problem with you bringing Danny to work with you. He’ll be going to the same school as Susie and me. I told you I have a teaching job that starts in the fall. Once classes start, he can even catch rides with us.”

Carrie shook her head. “It’s a bad idea.”

“What if I offer you double what you made at your last job?” he asked.

“Now, why would you do that?” Carrie asked.

“Camp’s over and I like seeing you every day. Susie does, too. It’d be great if you were the female influence in her life. And who knows?” He nudged her gently with his elbow. “If you spend more time with me, I might grow on you.”

Thanks to the cash prizes at bingo, she no longer had to worry about finding the money for camp. However, she needed to come up with money to pay her bills. She felt certain she could help make the B and B a success and that she’d love everything about managing it. But she couldn’t take advantage of him, not when he was such a great guy.

“I’m not gonna date you, Gustavo,” she said.

“That’s odd,” he said, “because we’re already dating. What did you think dinner Wednesday night was all about?”

“Two people getting together.” She repeated his words back to him.

“That’s the definition of a date,” he said. “The only reason I didn’t take you somewhere fancier is because I didn’t want to freak you out.”

No way would she tell him about how she’d changed from her sexy black dress when she’d spotted him out the window. Or confess she’d been initially disappointed when he suggested bingo after dinner, because she’d
envisioned him taking her for a nightcap to someplace elegant with candles on the tables.

“We’re together now and this isn’t a date,” she said.

“It’s almost a date,” Gustavo said. “Why do you think I picked up that seafood paella from Lucia’s Restaurant for dinner?”

“Because I told you how it’s so good I can hardly stand it?”

“Yes,” he said. “And that neighbor who stopped by and offered to stay with Susie and Danny while we took a walk? That was no coincidence. I asked her to do that.”

“Why’d you go and do that?” she asked.

“Why not?” He stopped walking and took her hand so she had to stop, too. “I like you, Carrie. A lot. I think you feel the same way about me.”

With the sun dipping lower on the horizon so it looked partially submerged in the cool gray-blue water of the bay, the colors of the sunset had intensified to create a fiery sky. The deserted beach setting couldn’t have been more romantic.

The reality, though, was that Carrie hadn’t been in the market for romance in three decades.

She slowly lifted her eyes to his, expecting the memory of her late husband to intrude, the way it always did when a man showed interest in her.

She saw only the strong planes and angles that made up Gustavo’s handsome face and the desire in his eyes.

Dear heavens, she wanted him to kiss her.

As though reading her mind, he tugged on her hand to bring her closer. Then he dipped his head so he was the only one she saw. His lips descended, getting closer....

“No,” she said, turning her head and pulling her hand out of his at the last second. She took a few staggering steps backward. “I can’t.”

He quickly masked his obvious disappointment. “Then I’ll be patient. I’m not asking you to forget about Scott, just that you make room for me.”

“It’s not Scott.” She could barely believe her own words, but it was true. The husband whose memory she’d held on to so tightly wasn’t the reason she couldn’t be with Gustavo. “There are things you don’t know about me, things you wouldn’t like.”

“Nothing you say could change how I feel about you,” he said.

Water splashed at her ankles while her feet sank into the sand. The tide was coming in, but she didn’t move. “Trust me on this.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I know you’re a good person, Carrie.”

“Would a good person have enrolled her foster son in a camp when she didn’t have the money to pay for it?” she asked. “I even tricked poor Tara into volunteering because I thought maybe then I could get you to forget about the tuition.”

“You never asked me to do that,” he said.

She couldn’t explain why she’d been reluctant to put him in that uncomfortable position.

“Didn’t you notice how late I was paying for the second week of camp?” she asked. “If not for those bingo jackpots, I wouldn’t have had the money.”

“That’s not so terrible,” he said. “You wanted the camp experience for Danny. You did it for him.”

“That’s another thing,” Carrie said. “You think I became a foster mother because I saw children in need. It was the other way ’round. After Tara went to college, I needed people around who needed me. Being alone plum terrified me.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Gustavo said. “Whatever your motives, look at all the children you’ve helped. It’s no crime to need people in our lives.”

She shook her head, her stomach twisting at the effort of holding back her deepest, darkest secret. “You’re not getting it. There’s something else, something I can’t tell you. Something I should never have done.”

He took both her hands this time. “Try me.”

Could she break the silence she’d kept all these years and confess her biggest transgression, especially because it involved Tara? Could she ever move forward with her life if she didn’t?

He gently squeezed her hands, gazing at her with his remarkable green eyes. “I dare you to tell me.”

She took a breath of the salty air, released it on the breeze and told him the terrible thing she’d done.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
ARA
WAS
HUMMING
ON
Saturday morning, something she almost never did. Recognizing the tune, she wrapped her arms around herself and smiled.

Earlier this week at camp she’d led the children in a rousing version of “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” Right about now she felt like clapping her hands, stamping her feet and shouting aloud all at the same time.

Spending last night with the sexiest man on the planet could do that to a girl. Okay, perhaps that was an exaggeration. She’d never been out of the United States and had barely left Virginia. Still, she couldn’t imagine a sexier man.

She’d stopped resisting Jack after watching the interplay between him and Danny at the dock. The passionate way he’d defended the child had warmed her through and through. It had suddenly seemed silly to keep him at arm’s length because of Hayley Cooper, a little girl who in all probability had no connection to her whatsoever.

So she’d given in to her heart and invited him home with her last night after her busy shift at O’Malley’s. This morning he’d rewarded her by awakening her in the most pleasurable way possible.

Her body still tingled from the aftermath of making love to him. Deciding to believe she was Tara Greer unless proven otherwise had been a very wise move. It had been inevitable, too. Fighting her growing attraction to Jack was too hard.

She dug around in her kitchen cabinets until she found a coffeemaker her mother had insisted she take when she’d bought a new one. Tara hadn’t really wanted it but now was glad she’d accepted it along with some packets of coffee. She didn’t drink the stuff, but Jack did.

He stuck his head out of her bedroom. He was dressed only in his boxer shorts, his hair was a mess and he needed a shave. She thought he looked terrific. If he asked, she’d tumble back into bed with him in a second.

“I’m gonna take a shower, if that’s all right,” he said.

“Sure. I’m putting on coffee. Want me to make breakfast?”

“Thanks, but I’ll grab one of those muffins I saw on your counter on the way out,” he said. “I need to get in some solid work on my shoulder.”

“How’s the rehab going?” she asked.

“It’s going,” he said. “A few more weeks and I’ll be ready to throw some pitches.”

She thought of what Art Goodnight had said about Jack never pitching in the majors again. She should talk to him about that. However, now wasn’t the time to bring it up.

“Any idea of what you’d like to do later?” Jack asked.

“Not yet,” Tara said. “How about you?”

“As long as we do something together, I’ll be happy.” He winked at her, then disappeared into the bedroom.

She smiled to herself. She felt the same way. While she was putting a blueberry muffin on a plate and pouring herself a glass of milk, she heard the shower start to run.

As good a time as any to check email.

With the glass of milk cradled in one hand and the plate in the other, she padded across the room to the computer sitting atop the rolltop desk that had once been her mother’s. Maybe she’d ask Jack to help her strip off the original finish this weekend. The materials they’d bought at the hardware store were still in her garage.

She sat down in the desk chair and arranged her food and drink to be easily reachable. She pressed the button that booted up the computer, bit into her muffin and waited while she chewed. She washed the bite of muffin down with a swig of milk and waited some more.

She’d forgotten how long the old computer took to get up and running. She might as well double-check to make sure the desk drawers were completely empty in case she got around to refinishing the rolltop in the next few days.

Her mother had done a fair job cleaning out the top two drawers, aside from a few loose paper clips. The bottom drawer, however, was half filled with assorted desk supplies. Tara went to the kitchen for a plastic grocery bag. When she returned to the desk, the icons on her computer screen had finally appeared. She positioned the mouse over her email icon and clicked. And waited. It’d be another few moments before her computer could access the internet.

She started taking things out of the drawer and dumping them into the bag. Scissors. A stapler. Tape. A couple of tablets and some sheets of loose-leaf paper. The drawer was empty in no time except for something stuck to the bottom of it.

It looked like the back of a photo.

Very carefully Tara peeled the item loose. From the texture, she could tell she was right. It was a photo. She flipped it over.

The face of the woman from her nightmares stared back at her. Her lips curved upward, but her eyes were cold. Tara heard herself gasp. Her hand flew to her mouth. Why did her mother have a photo of the awful woman?

The woman wasn’t alone in the photo. She stood behind a small girl about three years old who could have been Tara. Brown bangs fell into the girl’s eyes similar to the bangs Hayley Cooper had sported in the website photo.

What did it mean?

It meant the woman was real.

Tara tore her eyes from the woman staring back at her from the photo paper. Her gaze landed on her email inbox and a subject line that read “DNA results.”

The email had been sent late yesterday from the company she’d paid extra for expedited results. All this time she’d been in bed with Jack, it had been waiting for her.

Her heart hammering so hard she heard blood rushing in her ears, Tara reached for the mouse. Her index finger hovered over the button. Then she clicked.

The text of the email appeared, the first sentence jumping out at her.

Jane Doe is excluded as the biological mother of Tara Greer.

Because Tara hadn’t provided a name to go along with the hair sample, in actuality Jane Doe was Carrie Greer.

Who was not her mother.

Not her mother. Not her mother. Not her mother.

The surreal words echoed in Tara’s brain, making her entire life a lie.

“Mmm. This looks good.” Jack was in the kitchen, opening the package with the blueberry muffins. “Hope you don’t mind, but I’m gonna pass on the coffee.”

She heard him talking, but the only words that computed were the ones she’d just read.

“Tara?” Jack came toward her, a muffin in one hand. “Everything all right?”

He got increasingly closer, almost near enough to see the computer screen. She quickly closed her email program.

“Everything’s fine,” she said, the words sounding like a lie even to her own ears.

He cocked his head. “Are you sure?”

Things had never been less okay in her life. Again she yearned to confide in him, but she couldn’t, not until she figured out what to do—maybe not ever. She’d been a fool to give in to how she felt about him and dismiss the mounting evidence that she was Hayley, even if it was circumstantial.

She forced herself to smile. “I’m sure.”

“What’s that in your hand?” he asked.

She’d forgotten she was holding the photo. She crumpled it into her fist. “It’s nothing. Just some trash from the desk.”

He watched her with narrowed eyes, seeming about to say something else.

“Don’t you need to get going?” she asked.

“Yeah, right.” He leaned down and planted a soft kiss on her mouth, then straightened. “See you later.”

He was almost to the front door when he stopped and turned around. “I almost forgot to tell you. We’ve got plans for tonight, after all.”

It took everything Tara had to focus on what he’d said. Plans. For tonight. “We do?” she asked.

“Remember those calls I was getting last night that I let go to voice mail?” he asked.

She dredged up the memory and nodded. He’d said the calls were from one of his sisters.

“I just checked my messages,” he said. “My sister’s in Virginia Beach. She’ll be at my place late this afternoon. I thought the three of us could go to dinner together.”

Tara gulped back her panic. She needed to ask the question, although she already knew the answer. “Which sister?”

“Maria,” he said.

The private investigator who’d been hired to find Hayley Cooper, the little girl Tara now knew she used to be.

* * *

J
ACK
HAD
THOUGHT
OF
ALMOST
everything to make the first meeting between Tara and his sister go well. He’d made reservations at a classy restaurant by the water. He’d requested a table by the window with a view of the sunset. He’d gotten himself and Maria to the restaurant on time.

The one thing he hadn’t done was insist on picking up Tara.

“Are you sure you told her the right time?” Maria asked, twirling the stem of her wineglass. “She’s already fifteen minutes late.”

“I’m sure.” He’d called Tara with the plans a few hours ago, although they’d talked only a minute before she had to ring off.

“Did you check to see if she left you a message?” Maria asked.

Jack hadn’t heard his cell phone go off, but he pulled it out of his pocket to double-check. “No messages.”

Their waiter, a gentleman with slate-gray hair, gave another pass by their table. He was as elegant as the restaurant, a new place with a black-and-silver color scheme that took advantage of excellent views of the bay. It was nearly full, mostly with older customers who looked as if they were on vacation, the kind of people who had expendable income.

“We’re still waiting for one more person,” Jack told the waiter. To Maria, he said, “Let’s give her five more minutes. If Tara’s not here by then, I’ll call her.”

Maria had striking coloring. Pale skin, long black hair and blue eyes that were the definition of piercing.

“You really want me to meet her.” It was a statement, not a question. “Why is that? You can’t have known her long.”

“It doesn’t take long to know you like someone,” Jack said.

“How much do you like her?” Maria asked. “Enough that you have things to talk about when you’re not in bed together?”

Jack kneaded the spot between his eyes. “You’re not shy about asking me anything, are you?”

“Why should I be?” she asked. “I’m your sister. I love you.”

He might as well answer or she’d find another way to wheedle the information from him. “I enjoy Tara’s company, okay? Everybody does. She’s really plugged in to her community.”

Maria broke eye contact with him so he no longer felt like an insect under a microscope. She leaned back in her chair, “Bully for you, then. Summer flings can be a lot of fun.”

“Did I say it was a fling?’ he asked before he could stop himself. Who knew what Maria would make of that question?

“You said she has roots here,” Maria said. “You can’t be thinking of staying much longer.”

The text tone on his cell phone buzzed, saving him from answering. He wasn’t sure how he’d respond, anyway. He’d been living day by day, thinking only of working toward the goal of getting his arm healthy. He checked the display screen.

“It’s from Tara,” he told Maria.

He pressed a key and the text appeared.
Sorry. Can’t make it tonight.

“What’s wrong?” Maria asked.

He realized he was frowning. “Tara won’t be joining us.”

“Why not?’

He didn’t have the foggiest idea. Her text had offered no explanation. “Something came up,” he said vaguely.

“Then let’s get the waiter over here. I’m starving.” Maria said, raising a hand to signal him.

She ordered seafood and ate with gusto when the food came, deflecting his attempts to get to the bottom of the reason for her visit.

“Okay, enough,” he said after she’d eaten every bite of her meal and the waiter had brought her a piece of key lime pie. “I want to know what you’re really doing here.”

“I told you,” Maria said. “I was in Virginia Beach running down a lead on a case.”

“The Hayley Cooper case?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid that one won’t ever be solved. The trail’s too cold. This case was workmen’s compensation fraud.”

He frowned. “Why did the client call you and not someone local?”

“I went to college with the owner of the business,” she said. “I’m the only private eye he knows.”

“
You
know other private eyes. Why not just refer your friend to someone else?” He groaned as the answer struck him. “It was because of me, wasn’t it? You wanted an excuse to come here and check up on me.”

“Not entirely.” She put a forkful of pie into her mouth and closed her eyes in apparent bliss. She chewed before answering. “I also wanted an excuse to come to the beach for a few days.”

“Then you admit you’re checking up on me?”

“I prefer to think of it as providing moral support,” she said, waving a fork at him. “I know how tough these shoulder problems have been on you.”

“I’m working through them,” he said. “Getting stronger every day.”

“I meant mentally,” Maria said. “It can’t be easy to face up to the fact that you’ll never pitch in the majors again.”

He felt his spine stiffen. “That’s an opinion, not a fact.”

“Shared by everybody but you,” she said.

He looked out at the water. Clouds obscured the sinking sun, ruining what should have been a great sunset.

“I’m the only one who’s attached to my shoulder,” he pointed out. “Can we change the subject?”

“Okay,” she said. “When are you coming back to Kentucky?”

When my shoulder’s where I want it to be,
he thought.
When I’m ready to contact a major league club to say I’ve bucked the odds. When I can tear myself away from Tara.

“I haven’t decided,” he said.

“Because of that woman, Tara? Is she why you’re sticking around?” In typical Maria fashion, she didn’t give him time to answer. “How did you meet her, anyway?”

“She’s the physical education teacher who looks like the age progression of Hayley Cooper,” he said.

Maria snapped her thumb and the third finger of her right hand together before pointing at him.

“Maybe she is Hayley,” she said, eyes dancing. “Maybe she didn’t want to meet me because she thought I might figure it out.”

“Good try, but Tara isn’t Hayley Cooper,” Jack said. “I’m friends with Tara’s mother. Carrie’s such a good person that she’s the foster mother to a special-needs child.”