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“How did it go with the electrical inspector today?” she asked as she wandered over to look out the window at the street below. It was a humid and rainy afternoon. Business was probably slow. Maybe that’s why she had brought Greg upstairs in the middle of the afternoon.
“About like I expected. This place is a mess. A lot of the wiring up here is original. Scary as hell when you look at it.”
She turned, alarm on her face. “But downstairs—”
“It was rewired about ten years ago. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.” He didn’t want to worry her, but there were some areas on the ground floor that had been missed or skipped to save money. That wiring would have to be replaced, too. Another twenty thousand dollars he hadn’t been counting on.
“We have trouble with the computers sometimes when the air-conditioning is going full blast.”
“I’ll look into it.”
“Thanks.”
She didn’t make any move to leave or to hand over Greg. Dylan weighed the prospect of asking her out to dinner. He owed her a lot for bailing him out of a tight spot. But it would have to be someplace quick and casual. There was no one else to leave the baby with, unless he got the salesgirl—what was her name, Brittany?—to baby-sit. His mom would have a fit at that. He barely knew the girl.
But if Lana didn’t think her employee was competent enough to watch his son, she’d say so. He’d learned that much about her already. She spoke her mind and was confident in her opinions.
She stood there rocking, humming snatches of a lullaby under her breath. Her eyes were closed, her lashes dark against her cheeks. She looked tired. That made up his mind. Taking care of his son on top of running her business and overseeing that big house with only a once-a-week cleaning service and part-time gardener must be taking their toll. Besides, he liked the idea of sitting down to a meal with her, not bringing home take-out to wolf down at the kitchen island with only Greg in his carrier beside him for company.
“Lana.”
“Yes.” She opened her eyes. They were hazel, he’d noticed more than once. Sometimes more green than gold, sometimes darkening almost to brown. When she was angry or upset they got that way. Lightning in river water, he thought. Like now. She was frowning, too.
“I’d like to buy you something to eat tonight. A little thank-you for all you’ve done for us this week.”
“I can’t.” Her frown deepened. She must have tightened her hold on Greg, because he began to fuss a little. She shushed him, settling him more comfortably on her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so abrupt. It’s—”
“No apology necessary.” The words sounded perfunctory, and he regretted not being able to keep his chagrin hidden. Fine. She didn’t want to go out with him. That was all there was to it. She probably had a date and was trying to figure out how to tell the date she had Dylan and Greg living in her house. He’d never thought of that when he’d taken her up on the offer. On top of everything else he was complicating the hell out of her love life. “Look, if you need to be alone tonight, I’ll take Greg to the mall or something.”
“No. It isn’t that. I mean, if you’re asking me do I have a date, the answer is no. But I do have plans.” Dylan braced himself and didn’t know why. Possibly because he could see the agitation swirling in the depths of those green and gold eyes. Something had upset her. She brushed her lips across Greg’s hair, then took a little breath as though she wanted to get it all out in one string of words. “I’m meeting my sister and brothers at my aunt Megan’s. We were left on the doorstep at Maitland Maternity twenty-five years ago. Abandoned by a mother we never knew. We haven’t heard a word from her since then.” She shook her head as though she couldn’t quite come to terms with what she was about to say. “Until today.”
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR THE FIRST TIME in her life Lana was uncomfortable in Megan’s house. It felt alien to her, not the gracious, elegant home-away-from-home it had been for as long as she could remember. She had spent as much time growing up here as she had in her parents’ house. She had played with Ellie and Beth, Megan’s twin daughters, shared secrets with them, called boys on the phone with them. They had all swum in the pool and played in the yard, a tribe of healthy youngsters watched over by doting parents. Her memories of this place were all good ones.
But tonight it felt different because she was different. She was no longer Lana Megan Lord, beloved daughter of Terrence and Sheila. She was nobody. Alone and un-loved. It was as if memories of heartache and loss she’d never known she had suddenly forced themselves into the forefront of her mind. She clutched the little pink sweater Megan had given her tightly between her hands, staring at her name embroidered in crooked letters with darker pink floss. Embroidered by a ghost from the past, a woman of whom she had no conscious memory at all. Her mother.
She looked up. Shelby sat across from her on a matching sofa. They were in Megan’s private study, the place they always gathered when they were visiting her. It was a big, cozy room, filled with soft leather furniture and shelves of books and family photos, and almost always friends and members of Megan’s large family. But tonight the five of them were alone.
“She says this was the only fancywork she ever had time to do.” Shelby quoted from the note Megan had read them as she distributed the gifts. It had been handwritten, short and unsigned. “That sounds so sad.”
“I can’t imagine ever being this small.” Michael had placed the tiny blue sweater bearing his name on a table, as though distancing himself from the woman who had given it to him, embroidered it so lovingly and then walked out of his life. “At least we know now the names pinned to our shirts really were the ones she gave us.”
When they were small, the triplets had sometimes climbed into the branches of the live oak tree in the back yard and wondered aloud who they might be. Garrett, older by two years, had scoffed at them. He remembered their names, he’d insisted when they picked others they liked better. He’d told Megan so from the very first day.
But one day when the three of them were ten and Garrett was twelve, they’d quit asking him about memories of their real mother. That was the day he and Michael had gotten into a fight over Garrett’s insistence that he could remember nothing about her anymore. And if he did he wasn’t going to tell Michael, or Shelby and Lana, either. She had thrown them all away, he’d said. Just like they were toys she didn’t want. If she didn’t want them, then he didn’t want to remember her. That had been the last time he’d spoken of her to Lana. And not long after that Lana had made the same promise to herself.
“Why do you think she sent these things to us now?” Shelby asked, her eyes sparkling with emotion. “Why, after all these years without a word?”
“Who knows.” Michael moved restlessly around the room, his hands shoved in the pockets of his pants. The physical resemblance between Shelby and Michael was marked. The same with Garrett. They all had tanned skin and dark auburn hair and strongly marked lashes and eyebrows that had somehow become muted to cinnamon and cream when they got to Lana.
“What if she’s in need? I mean, if she never had time for a hobby then maybe she still hasn’t got enough money—”
“You can’t go by that, Shelby. You can’t make any kinds of assumptions from that note. We may be dealing with a real nut case here.”
“Mike. You’re talking about our mother.”
“She’s not my mother. My mother was Sheila Lord. I don’t intend to go looking for some stranger to replace her.” Michael had taken their mother’s death hard. Their father had been sick for several months before his death. But Sheila had only complained of a headache, of needing to lie down for a few minutes. She’d died of a massive stroke only an hour later. Some days it was hard for Lana to believe she was gone, even though it had been almost three years.
Shelby winced at the vehemence in their brother’s tone. Some of the excitement faded from her eyes. “I…I thought you might want to help me find her.”
“Find her? What in hell for?”
“She said she loved us,” Shelby whispered. She turned to Lana. “What do you think, Lana? Shouldn’t we look for her?”
Lana glanced helplessly at Megan. The older woman smiled her understanding and encouragement. She knew how much Lana still missed her mother. “No,” Lana said, placing her little pink sweater on top of Michael’s blue one. “I’m with Mike. Let her come to us. She obviously knows who we are, how to find us if she wants to. I won’t go looking for her.”
“I’ll help you, Shel.” Garrett was standing with one shoulder propped against the fern-filled marble fireplace. He looked at the scruffy, bedraggled teddy bear that had been his gift from the past. If he remembered playing with it as a toddler, he gave no evidence of it.
“Oh, Garrett, will you?” Shelby’s smile returned, brighter than before.
“It would be easier if you helped us, Mike.” The words seemed pulled from somewhere deep inside him. Garrett didn’t ask favors easily, even from those closest to him.
But Michael was adamant. He was perhaps the most stubborn of them all. “No, bro, not this time. I have absolutely no interest in the woman who didn’t care enough about any of us to try and keep us together as a family.”
“But, Mike.” Shelby tried again. “You don’t know that. She left us for Aunt Megan—”
“Yeah, I know she could have turned us over to the welfare people to get sucked into the system, but she couldn’t have known we’d stay together. It’s only because Aunt Megan knew how much Mom and Dad wanted a family. We were damned lucky, that’s all. She doesn’t deserve any credit for that.” He picked up his sweater and Lana’s and went to put them in the plain cardboard box in which they’d come. “I don’t want anything to do with her.”
“Please, Michael. Don’t throw it away,” Shelby begged. “Lana, you, too.”
He turned to her, the little pink sweater still in his hands. “I wasn’t going to throw them away. I’m just not interested in looking at them anymore.”
“Me, too, Shel, honey. I…I just don’t want to take it home with me,” Lana said uncertainly. She’d been on her own for half a dozen years. She was able to take care of herself, but these relics of their past had hit her hard.
Michael handed the box with the three little sweaters to Shelby. “Don’t get in a huff, sis,” he said with that devastating smile of his that lifted one corner of his mouth higher than the other.
“I’ll take yours for safekeeping. I’ll take the teddy bear, too, Garrett, if you don’t want it.” Shelby held out her hand. “You can come and get them whenever you want.”
Garrett handed the bear over. “I don’t need anything to remind me that I was left on the doorstep of a public building without even a blanket to cover me.”
“It was quite warm the day you came to me, Garrett,” Megan said. “I remember very clearly. There was absolutely no question of you suffering from the cold.” There was a slight note of reproof in her low, cultured voice as she stood and walked from behind the big mahogany desk where she’d been sitting.
“There’s always something inside you that’s cold when you don’t know who you are or where you come from.”
Shelby and Lana exchanged looks. They had never heard their brother speak like that before. “I’m going to start looking for her first thing tomorrow,” Garrett said. “I could use your help, Mike. But if you don’t want anything to do with it, I’ll go it alone.”
“Like I said—deal me out.”
“I’ll help you, Gar.” There was a note of defiance in Shelby’s voice.
“Thanks, sis.”
“I’ve got to be going,” Michael announced. “Thanks for everything, Aunt Megan. Shelby, are you ready to leave?” Michael had picked Shelby up at Austin Eats when he left Maitland Maternity. He’d offered to drive Lana, too, but it was more convenient for her to take her own car. And besides, she’d been too upset to deal with introducing her brother to Dylan and Greg. And then having to explain their new living arrangements. Time enough for that when the shock of their mother’s gifts had worn off.
“I’ll drop Shel off at her place on my way to the ranch. It’s not out of the way. We’ve got some stuff to talk about,” Garrett said. “Lana, do you want us to follow you home?”
Garrett didn’t ask her again if she wanted to help in the search, and she was grateful. She wanted it all to go away. She wanted everything to be the same as it had been that morning, before Megan stopped by the store. But it was different. And for more reasons than because of these tokens from the unknown past.
She thought of the man and baby waiting for her at home. “No, Gar, thanks anyway. I’ll be fine. You’ll be going out of your way to follow me and you know it.”
“Then we’ll all be going.” Garrett allowed Megan to give him a quick hug.
“Good luck in your quest, Garrett,” Megan said.
“We’ll need it,” he replied grimly.
“And good luck to you,” she said to Lana. Unspoken between them was the knowledge that Megan alone knew Lana wasn’t going home to an empty house. “I think you’ve embarked on quite a different quest of your own.”
A QUEST OF YOUR OWN.
A journey to find something wondrous and fine.
A journey to find one’s self.
Except she knew who she was. Didn’t she?
Megan was reading too much into the fact Dylan Van Zandt was staying with her. It was just a more convenient way to help him hone his parenting skills, and safer for Greg, too. There was no deeper meaning in having him in the big, empty house she’d rattled around in since her mother died.
She parked her car in the garage, passing Dylan’s truck on the way in. Her dad’s classic ’57 Thunderbird was parked along the far wall, covered with a nylon tarp. Michael kept saying he was going to take it, tune it up and drive it, but he never had. It didn’t matter. The garage was big enough for five cars. Now it only held two.
She’d told Dylan to feel free to park his pickup inside, but he hadn’t taken her up on the offer. Not even today when it had rained all day and she’d left a spare remote for the garage door lying conspicuously on the kitchen island.
He seemed determined to keep his distance. And, of course, it was better for both of them that way.
She walked slowly along the brick path that led to the kitchen door. The rain had stopped while she was at Megan’s, although the air was so thick and humid it made little difference. The heavy scent of the night-blooming jasmine that covered the side of the garage perfumed the darkness. The moon rode high in the sky, peeking out from amid a tatter of fleeing clouds. There was light in the kitchen, and in the maid’s room where Dylan and Greg had taken up residence. Lana quickened her step. It made the house look more lived-in. As it had when she was a girl—when there was a family living here, not just one sometimes lonely young woman.
She punched in the code of the security system Michael had insisted Sheila install after their father’s death and stepped inside. Dylan was standing by the microwave, watching the seconds count down on the digital display beside the door, Greg propped against his shoulder.
The baby was awake, staring at the door as though waiting for her to appear. His head wobbled, and he laid it on Dylan’s shoulder. He was very weak yet, compared with other babies his age. Lana’s heart turned over in her chest. He appeared so tiny and fragile. He had overcome much already, but he had more challenges ahead of him than other children, and not just because he was born prematurely.
Growing up never knowing your mother was a hard thing to do. She had managed because she had loving adoptive parents who had smoothed her way. But Greg had only Dylan, a man who distanced himself from his son as well as everyone else—or at least her.
Dylan turned around. “Hi,” he said. He was wearing a blue oxford cloth shirt, hanging open, exposing a muscled chest covered with dark hair. Greg’s little fingers were tangled in the curling mat, and the contrast between the man’s strength and hardness and the baby’s utter helplessness and fragility sent a glittering arc of sensation from Lana’s heart to her womb. It wasn’t a sexual awareness, she told herself, but something more primitive than that. It was more the receptiveness of the female for the male of the species, the protector, the provider. It was conditioning over a million years, nothing more.
“Hi. I thought you’d both be in bed by now.” She wasn’t a cavewoman. This was the twenty-first century. Women were just as often the protector and provider as men. She ignored the increased beat of her pulse and moved into the room.
“Greg decided he needed a midnight snack.” The microwave beeped, and Dylan turned to remove the bottle warming inside. He secured the nipple and tested the liquid on the inside of his wrist, as she’d taught him. He shifted Greg from his shoulder to the crook of his arm and touched the nipple to the side of the baby’s mouth.
Greg turned his head automatically and latched on to the nipple, sucking greedily. It should be his mother’s nipple, Lana thought sadly. Did Dylan have such thoughts, too, as he mourned the death of his son’s mother, his wife, his lover?
He was frowning slightly as he watched his son. He didn’t look sad, only fiercely focused on what he was doing. His hands were big and wide, his fingers long and blunt-tipped. Strong hands that could mold and build, soothe a crying baby, arouse a willing woman. Again she felt that glittering tug of awareness deep inside her. It bothered her. She didn’t want to think about making love to any man right now.
And she noticed something else. Dylan was no longer wearing his wedding ring.
Lana forced herself to concentrate on the baby.
“He’s certainly hungry.”
“He took three ounces his last feeding. If he takes three ounces this time, I’m hoping he’ll sleep longer.”
“I’d be happy to give him his two o’clock feeding.” Lana heard herself say the words. Dylan did look tired. He let her take care of Greg during the day, when he was upstairs overseeing the renovations of her building. But in the evening and during the night, he kept the baby to himself.
“Thanks, I’ll take care of it.” A rebuff, but a polite one.
“I wouldn’t mind, really.”
“I know you wouldn’t. But I think I can keep up with him.”
Lana dropped onto one of the stools arranged around the center island. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Too late for me. You look right at home sittin’ there.”
“I spent a lot of hours here. My mother was a wonderful cook.”
“Mine isn’t,” he said, and grinned. “It’s a good thing my dad can cook or we’d have all starved.”
“I have a limited repertoire, but I’m good at what I do. Great-grandma Bostleman’s buttermilk sugar cookies. And pot roast and chicken and dumplings.”
“Sounds good.”
“I’ll make us some the first cool day. But Shelby got all the real culinary talent in the family. Since we’re all adopted, she insists she picked it up from Mom through osmosis.” She fell silent, thinking of the hours just past, wishing her mother was here for her to confide in.
“How did your evening go?”
She hadn’t expected him to ask such a personal question. So far their short conversations had centered on Greg’s care, the weather, whether Dylan needed towels or soap or toilet paper for the bathroom. Her surprise must have registered on her face. “You looked kind of shell-shocked when you walked in the door.”
“I am.” Her arms ached to reach out and take Greg from him, to cuddle the little boy close and take comfort from his baby warmth and softness. She sat up a little straighter. “It’s not every day you hear from the mother you never knew. And then to find out she’s still as anonymous as she ever was.”
“What do you mean by that?” He moved a few steps closer, hooked the toe of his shoe around a stool, pulled it away from the island and settled himself on it without jarring Greg or taking the bottle out of his mouth.
Lana rested her elbows on the countertop and propped her chin on her hands. “My birth mother sent a package to Aunt Megan with a note that what was inside was for us. She obviously found out who had adopted us and that Aunt Megan was still in contact with us.”
“Or at least she hoped so.”
“No. She thanked Aunt Megan for finding us a good home.” Lana recited the little note, picturing the block lettering in her mind’s eye. “It was printed, as though she wanted to disguise her handwriting. As if she didn’t want us to have that small a hint of who she was.”
“Where was it mailed from?”
