His Ten-Year-Old Secret

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With her hopes soaring, Tess rushed to the window, scrambling in her purse for something to write with at the same time.

“Thank you,” she told the woman. “Thank you so much.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t do you any favors. His number is there in the window for all the world to see.”

Tess protested, “Yes, but—”

“Would you stop already,” the woman said, grinning. “And go make your call. There’s a telephone right there on the corner.”

“I will.” Tess stuffed the ink pen back into her purse and then began fishing for change as she headed for the phone booth.

Dylan answered on the third ring, the sound of his voice like a soft caress against Tess’s ear.

“Dylan,” she said, making every effort to speak smoothly, “it’s Tess.”

There were several seconds of dead silence.

Finally she heard him exhale in a short, puffy sort of sigh.

“I’ve got to admit,” he said quietly, “you’ve surprised me again. I thought I might hear from you, but . not quite so soon. How’d you get my home number?”

Not wanting to get the elderly lady who had helped her into hot water, Tess only told him half the truth. “From the emergency card you have posted in the front window at your auto repair shop.”

“Ah.”

The small sound was velvet soft over the phone line.

“And you thought this constituted an emergency.”

Tess listened hard, but detected no censure in his tone, and she was left believing that this was his way of filling what would have otherwise been an awkward silence.

“It is to me,” she told him. “We need to talk, Dylan.”

Again, he sighed, but this one was tinged with irritation.

“Look,” he said, “this isn’t a good time. I’m trying to get dinner. And thanks to my mother, Erin has a boatload of make-up work that needs to be done before school tomorrow. It isn’t a good time for you to be coming over here and disrupting Erin’s life—”

“I have no intention of disrupting anything,” Tess said, cutting in. It broke her heart to hear him talk of cooking dinner and helping with homework so mundanely when she’d never once had the opportunity to do such things for her daughter.

“Dylan...” The pleading in her voice was so thick, she had to stop.

All she wanted to do was make him understand. But if she were to simply blurt out the situation; that she’d been lied to, that she’d thought all these years that their baby was dead, that someone had committed a horrendous crime by stealing her child, he’d think she’d gone completely insane. She needed to see him face-to-face. She needed to tell him everything in a calm, rational manner. That was the only way to make him understand she was telling the truth.

Before she could speak, he said, “I want you to know that I won’t allow you to upset Erin. I don’t want you overwhelming her.”

“I understand,” she said. “I don’t want to overwhelm her, either.”

She’d never dream of causing her daughter one moment of worry or trouble.

“M-maybe,” she stumbled over her thoughts as they came at her, “it would be best if you and I met. Just to talk. To catch up.”

The third sigh he expelled was weary sounding.

“I told you, Tess. I’m in the middle of fixing dinner. And then there’s Erin’s schoolwork. I want to be here if she needs me.”

“Of course,” she quickly agreed. “But maybe after? There’s a coffee shop down the street from your garage. In the same building where my dad had his shop. We can talk there.”

“It’ll be at least two hours. And I don’t know if I can find a sitter.”

“I’ll wait,” she said in a rush.

She heard yet another exhalation.

“Please, Dylan. Please try.” She could think of nothing else to say except, “I’ll be waiting,” and then she gently hung up the phone.

Chapter Three

He wasn’t coming.

Absently Tess tapped the teaspoon against the palm of her hand. She glanced at the door of the small coffee shop for what surely must have been the millionth time.

Her eyes latched onto the large-faced clock behind the wide, white counter. Ten after nine. Nearly three hours had gone by since she’d called Dylan. Without thought, she raised her thumb to her mouth and searched nervously for a cuticle to worry.

He wasn’t coming.

But he wouldn’t not come. Would he? Not after the way she’d pleaded with him. Not when she’d just discovered—

“Here you go,” the waitress said softly, setting a tall, icy glass of lemonade in front of Tess. “This is on the house. You won’t sleep a wink tonight with all the coffee you’ve had.”

A shadowy smile of appreciation barely curled the corners of Tess’s mouth. Sliding the empty coffee mug away from her several inches, she murmured, “Thank you,” and reached for the glass.

“I wish you’d let me bring you something to eat,” the waitress said.

The concern she heard in the woman’s tone surprised Tess. She was a complete stranger to the waitress. Only in a town as small as Pine Meadow would total strangers take such an interest in another’s welfare, she thought.

“Thanks,” Tess said, noticing that the woman’s name tag identified her as Sue. “But I couldn’t eat a thing.”

Sue’s distress deepened into creases that marred her brow. “Are you sure you gave him the correct address? I mean, is there any chance he might have gone to some other coffee shop? There’s a diner on High Street,...”

This time Tess’s surprise had her mouth inching open, her eyes blinking. She’d guessed Tess was waiting for someone. Waiting for a man.

Shifting her weight onto one hip, Sue absently slipped her pencil behind her ear, shook her head and said softly, “Honey, you’re watching that door like you expect it to slip off its hinges and walk away. And no woman sits around for hours unless she’s expecting a man. An important man.”

The feathery-yet-intense inflection the waitress placed on the last short sentence clearly conveyed that she was sure that the man Tess awaited was no less than a lover. In any other circumstance, Tess was sure she’d have blushed. But the chaos reigning in her brain had her thoughts, her emotional responses, fragmented, splintered.

Dylan was an important man, she realized. Not because of any close relationship she shared with him, but because of what they had created. A precious child. A daughter. Erin.

The beautiful name whispered across her mind, and Tess latched onto it, focused on it and enjoyed a small moment of calm.

But the mere idea that her daughter was alive and well soon had her head churning all over again. However, she knew getting lost in the questions wouldn’t help her one bit, so shoving the roiling thoughts aside, she looked up at the waitress.

“He is important,” Tess admitted, although she didn’t feel up to straightening out the woman’s erroneous thinking by clarifying all that her statement meant.

“Well, you wait as long as you like,” Sue told her. “We don’t close till eleven.”

The front door opened then, and Tess and the waitress were turning their heads to look before the small bells attached to the door’s hinge barely had time to tinkle.

He looked good, Tess mused, her pulse pumping to life through veins that suddenly felt too small. Even though trouble clouded his eyes, the intense green of them had her breath catching in her throat. She remembered years ago how the long, wavy hair at the back of his neck would curl in silky tresses around her finger. But his chestnut hair was cut shorter now. In a more respectable fashion.

“Dylan! What brings you out at this time of night?” Sue greeted. “You’re usually home with Erin, doing homework and housework, playing Daddy.”

Tess didn’t know why she was so taken aback that the waitress knew Dylan—his shop was just up the block from the coffeehouse—but startled she was. However, maybe it wasn’t so much that the waitress knew him, but the familiarity with which Sue greeted him that had Tess feeling so...odd.

Jealousy.

When she put a name to the emotion that was constricting her chest, she nearly gasped. Impossible! It was completely out of the question.

Then what was it?

Despite the anxiety shadowing his gaze, Dylan smiled at the waitress—and it was then that Tess correctly identified what she was feeling.

Envy. She was pea green with it. Before she could analyze the feeling further, though, Dylan’s intense gaze was once again focused on her, silently demanding her attention.

“Let’s go,” he said, keeping the door propped open with one hand.

Tess felt as if she moved in slow motion as she made to rise. A small exhalation of shock erupted from the waitress. Looking up at the woman, Tess saw questions in Sue’s eyes.

You’ve been waiting for Dylan? her gaze seemed to ask.

As if she were in a sleep-fogged dream, Tess decided she simply couldn’t concern herself with the woman’s curiosity. Tossing some bills on the table, she turned toward the door.

“I’ve got a fresh apple pie in the back,” the waitress said to Dylan. “You sure I can’t talk you into having a slice?”

“Some other time, Sue,” Dylan said. “Erin’s with a sitter, and she won’t go to bed until I get home and put my foot down. Thanks anyway.” Then his gaze darted to Tess and he curtly repeated, “Let’s go,” his tone urging her to hurry.

The waitress softly called, “Bye.”

And Tess was surprised to realize she was the one being spoken to. She nodded to the woman and offered her a distracted smile as she moved toward Dylan.

He was holding the door open and she was forced to brush the broad expanse of his chest with her shoulder as she passed between him and the doorjamb. The woodsy aroma of his cologne struck her full force and her instinct urged her to hesitate, to savor his heated scent. But luckily, he planted his hand firmly on the small of her back and propelled her out onto the sidewalk. Normally she’d have been incensed by such overbearing behavior, but she was relieved to follow his lead at the moment. How idiotic would she have looked if she’d paused to sniff the man’s cologne?